Dreams - An International Juried Exhibition of Book Art

Planning for this exhibition began while we were still reeling from the pandemic as well as  so many injustices across our country, and as curators we sought to identify a theme that would provide the opportunity to capture hopes and aspirations. And what better theme than that of Dreams!

Dreams also allow us to experience worlds beyond borders, barriers, and binaries. They are narratives that grow out of our waking experiences into the fantastical, unexpected, and strange. Sometimes vivid, other times elusive, dreams can immerse us in hope and beauty. Their meaning and mechanics are a mystery. In dreams, we can encounter the impossible.

This exhibition represents the work of 51 artists each sharing a unique window into their own dreams whether they be memories, historical events, aspirations or even quite literal. Some of the books are quite serious and moving and others have a bit of humor. There are books which reflect personal dreams, journeys, hopes and aspirations.

The dictionary definition of a dream is a series of thoughts, images and sensations occurring in a person's mind during sleep or a cherished aspiration, ambition or ideal. Whatever your own definition of a dream is, we believe this exhibition captures the essence of how dreams play a powerful role in our lives by processing memories and events and inspiring creativity. And that it engages us all to contemplate our own dreams!

©2022 Louise Levergneux. Infatuation

Robert Bolick, Books On Books — Bookmarking Book Art – Architecture

Excerpt from City Shields, Vol 1: No 7 Ontario (2017) by Robert Bolick.

Like Finding Home, this work is autobiographical, documenting Levergneux’s travels from 1999 to 2020, from Scotland, Canada and the US. As summarized on the insert for this one issue, the shapes and design of the actual manhole covers vary — as do their die-cut photos — some round, some square, rectangular, flanged. Small as they are, their colors and shadows nevertheless entice thoughts of miniature tunnels and drains lying beneath them and winding their way under whatever surface on which the manhole covers rest. City Shields‘ evocation of hidden space and their reminder to look down as well as up at city architecture create a strange and welcome fit with the architectural theme in the Books On Books Collection.

Levergneux celebrated the close of the City Shields project with a 20th Anniversary Edition, described here.

Robert Bolick, Books On Books — Bookmarking Book Art – Architecture

Excerpt from Finding Home (2019) by Robert Bolick.

An explosion box, Turkish map fold, and small 3D-printed plastic house — the inventive combination reflects the many-featured domain of book art. That alone would warrant adding this work to the collection, but its union of material with content clinched the decision.

The work’s nomadic theme may have its roots in Levergneux’s various places of residence over time, but it also echoes her blog, entitled 1/2Measure Studio, which began at the end of 2015 with her moving from a 20×12-foot studio into one measuring 10×10. The blog records indefatigable travels and visits with fellow book artists at all points of the compass to which Finding Home‘s four flaps might also allude — just as the small model might also allude to the half-measure studio.

Among the Turkish fold maps, the small house also conveys centrality and both a point of departure and one of arrival. The spirals and concentric circles within the open maps emphasize further the theme of seeking a center. But the work is not only about place. With all the maps open, we have a house surrounded by four blooms of color, which implies a still point in time among the shifting seasonal imagery.

There’s much about this work that recalls Gaston Bachelard’s The Poetics of Space (1969). There is, of course, the miniature house itself, for which Bachelard has entire chapters, but also in the maps, there is the butterfly recalling the chrysalis (pp. 85-86); the sun-kissed foothills, the recurrent theme of the horizon, distance and immensity (passim); the red maple leaf, the autumnal recollections (p. 179); and the prairie snowscape, the paean to snow (p.61); and the longitudinal and latitudinal references, recalling this passage:

Each one of us, then, should speak of his roads, his crossroads, his roadside benches; each one of us should make a surveyor’s map of his lost fields and meadows. Thoreau said that he had the map of his fields engraved in his soul. And Jean Wahl once wrote: 

Le moutonnement des haies C’est en moi que je l’ai. Poème, p. 46 (The frothing of the hedges I keep deep inside me.)

Robert Bolick, Books on Books, April 23, 2019

Excerpt from Bookmarking Book Art – The Colophon and the Left-over “i” — “This may not be the first bilingual colophon I have seen, but its being inside the top of the box enclosing the work makes it the first to occupy the physical summit a work”.

© 2016 Louise Levergneux. Finding Home

University of California, Berkeley

City Shields, DC VolUS 1, No:1 was featured as part of the Hands on: An Evening with Artists' Books exhibition in August 2015.

Mr Nakagawa, 20 Creative Manhole Covers

Castagra Products, a storage tank and wastewater coatings manufacturing company that is highly acclaimed for its sustainable coatings and cold weather coating applications. Castagra products are NSF-61 certified and are used by the world’s top water and wastewater contractors.

In the Castagra Products blog post "20 Creative Manhole Covers," Mr Nakagawa, VP of Marketing and co-founder of Castagra Products, presents different creative explorations of the manhole cover design.

MCBA: Book Art Biennial

Blog posted by Sage Dawson, Printeresting, July 25, 2013

© 2013 Louise Levergneux, Decades Apart

blog post can be read at:

http://www.printeresting.org/2013/07/25/mcba-2013-book-art-biennial/

"Books of the Heart/Heart of the Books" online exhibition at Baylor University

View my artists' book Reciprocal as part of the "Books of the Heart/Heart of the Books" online exhibition from the special collections at the Baylor University, Crouch Music and Fine Arts Library, 2012

Visionner mon livre d'artiste Réciproque dans le cadre de l'exposition en ligne des collections spéciales à l'Université Baylor "Books of the Heart/Heart of the Books" Crouch Music and Fine Arts Library, 2012

February Quiz of the Month

City Shields at the Iowa State University Library, Parks Library Preservation, February Quiz of the  month, 2012

City Shields à la Bibliothèque de l'Université de  l'owa, Parks Library Preservation, February Quiz of the  month, 2012

Another Place by University of Wisconsin in Milwaukee

This exhibition brings together works by American and international artists that focus on concepts of place and travel, using materials drawn almost entirely from the Book Arts Collection in Special Collections at the UWM Libraries. Special Collections Librarian Max Yela. https://liblamp.uwm.edu/omeka/SPC2/exhibits/show/anotherplace

The unifying element for the exhibition is the recent portfolio project The Other Place, a suite of prints by Wisconsin artist Bob Erickson and Irish artist Keith Wilson, each of whom spent time in the home of the other, and then expressed in prints their understandings of each other's place. Other materials on display include works by noted American printmakers and book artists, such as Sarah Bryant, Fred Hagstrom, Karen Hanmer, Jim Lee, Clifton Meador, Gaylord Schanilec, Clarissa Sligh, Bonnie Stahlecker, Barbara Tetenbaum, Peter & Donna Thomas, and international artists, including David Esslemont (Wales), Néstor Goyanes (Argentina), Mirta Kupferminc (Argentina), Jean-Claude Loubières (France), Louise Levergneux (Canada), Xavier Monsalvatje (Spain), and Shu-Ju Wang (Taiwan).

All the works presented in the exhibition offer individual perspectives on what it means to be here or there, what we bring with us and what we leave behind, our sense of rootedness and uprootedness, our desires for home and for the road, and the miraculous nature of moving through the world and our encounters with it. As William Lawlor observes in his poem for The Other Place, "each step I take is measured near and far; there is this place, and then there is the other."

Continue to the interactive exhibit →

City Shields, 26NOV2006

Johanna Druker, Artists' Book Online

Artists' Books Online is designed to promote critical engagement with artists books and to provide access to a digital repository of metadata, scans, and commentary. The project serves several different communities: artists, scholars and critics, librarians and curators, and interested readers.

view my artists' book Beside Me on Artists' Books Online 

view my project City Shields on Artists' Books Online

view my artists' book Windows of the Soul on Artists' Books Online

Artists' Books Online est conçu pour promouvoir l'engagement critique avec des livres d'artiste et fournir l'accès à un dépôt numérique de métadonnées, de feuilletages et de commentaires. Le projet sert plusieurs communautés différentes : artistes, érudits et critiques, bibliothécaires et conservateurs et lecteurs intéressés.

visionner mon livre d'artiste Beside Me à Artists' Books Online

visionner mon projet City Shields à Artists' Books Online

visionner mon livre d'artiste Windows of the Soul à Artists' Books Online

The CCCA Canadian Art Database

The CCCA Canadian Art Database Project documents the careers of Canada's leading professional artists, designers, art writers, and curators, as well as some important Canadian art institutions and organizations that have helped shape the Canadian art scene since the 1960s. Established in 1997 by Bill Kirby, Director of the Centre for Contemporary Canadian Art, is now permanently housed at Concordia University under the auspices of the Gail and Stephen A. Jarislowsky Institute for Studies in Canadian Art.

view my work at: https://ccca.concordia.ca/

Le CACC documente les carrières des principaux artistes professionnels, graphistes, écrivains et conservateurs du Canada, ainsi que les activités d'importantes institutions et organisations artistiques canadiennes qui ont contribué à la scène artistique canadienne depuis les années 1960. Établi en 1997 par Bill Kirby, le Directeur du Centre d'art contemporain Canadien est maintenant de manière permanente logé à l'Université Concordia, sous les auspices de Gail and Stephen A. Jarislowsky Institute for Studies in Canadian Art.

visionner mon travail à: https://ccca.concordia.ca/