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Book Arts
REVENGE OF THE BIBLIOPHILIACS
» Thursday 16 July 2009 | 5 pm
» The Bohemian Café, 524 Bernard Avenue
An informal afternoon hour showcasing ideas
and people in the Okanagan creative economy. Join us as book artists Jason Dewinetz, Mark Rucker, Robert MacDonald and guests discuss the arts and crafts of bookmaking and showcase their work and examples from their collections.
» $2 at the door. Refreshments are available at a modest cost.
» Seating is limited, please reserve yours HERE
Experts Uncover the Making of Books Beautiful, Strange and Rare
There is still something unreplicable about the true book experience, one that can't be matched by even the slickest electronic gadget. Superbly functional, highly convenient, with instant-on and no batteries required, the book is still our personal rabbit hole to the trance of reading. Books are artefacts of our personal reality, a wall of volumes represent our growth and development, and holding a book is still a unique human experience. And some books are undeniably beautiful and seductive works of art.
On Thursday, July 16th at 5 pm the ongoing weekly Okanagan Institute Express series at the Bohemian Café presents Book Arts: Revenge of the Bibliophiliacs. Join us as book artists Jason Dewinetz, Mark Rucker, Robert MacDonald and guests discuss the arts and crafts of bookmaking and showcase their work and examples from their collections.
 Jason Dewinetz is a writer, printer, publisher and typographer originally from the Okanagan Valley. An instructor at Okanagan College, Jason is also the proprietor, editor, and designer of Greenboathouse Press, a small letterpress concern publishing limited editions by writers from across Canada. Jason's design for Greenboathouse has recently brought in his fourth consecutive Alcuin Award for Excellence in Book Design in Canada, and in 2008 served on the jury for this national competition. Jason has just returned from presenting a talk on fine press publishing to the National Arts Club in New York City. He will discuss the history and contemporary practice of letterpress printing, and will have on display a range of tools, type and books related to the art of fine press publishing.
As Jason says, "The pace of publishing continues to increase with print-on-demand technologies and discounted on-line distribution, and books have never been more plentiful. Neither have they been, in their 500 year history, so poorly made. For more than 90% of that history, books were made by hand, set one metal letter at a time and printed letterpress into well made paper, creating an object suitable and equal to the time, attention and discipline applied to the works they presented. In the midst of the current technological boon, letterpress has begun to make a significant comeback, with pockets of talented and hard-working printer/publishers tucked away in studios from Vancouver Island to right here in the Okanagan."
 Mark Rucker has been operating a publishing and picture agency Transcendental Graphics since 1986. He uses his artistic skills as both painter and sculptor to seek out the beauty in the images he collects. He started out focusing strictly on baseball imagery, but by the mid-1990s, his need for more visual stimulus urged him to expand the agency to include historical images of all kinds, particularly in the genres of photography and lithography. Not one to define himself by national borders, his love of the beautiful and the obscure has helped him unearth images from Cuba, Japan, Mexico, Dominican Republic, England and Australia. Today Rucker's collection includes images of the Old West, aboriginal people, carnivals and circus, theatre, the comical and ridiculous, transportation, social history, labour, women, advertising, and the fantastic. He has recently embarked on an initiative to produce high-quality limited edition portfolios from his collection.
 Robert MacDonald is a typographer by trade, and has had a long and distinguished career in publishing. He was the Director of the Publishing Workshops at the University of Toronto and the Banff Centre for fifteen years. He was a founder of Dreadnaught Press, which produced limited edition handmade books in the 1970s and 80s, and of Nova Paperworks, the first modern Canadian handmade paper mill in Bear River, Nova Scotia. He has been involved in a number of book, magazine and multimedia publishing companies in Canada and the US. He is the Publisher in Residence at Okanagan College, and the Director of the Okanagan Institute.
MacDonald maintains, "The most obvious quality that sets limited edition handmade books apart is the amount of human thought, skill and sheer hard work invested in each title, and each individual book. The people who do this kind of work have a special gift. When you hold one of these rare objects in your hands, and turn the pages, and soak in the carefully and lovingly crafted confluence of form and function, you can't help being transported to a wonder-full place, a garden of multi-sensual delights."
FOR MORE INFORMATION AND TO REGISTER ONLINE CLICK HERE
Book Arts: Revenge of the Bibliophiliacs takes place at the Bohemian Café. This marks the 98th event the Okanagan Institute has held since the Express series got underway in July 2007.
Express has played host to many Okanagan luminaries, including former deputy secretary general of Amnesty International Derek Evans, artists Lee Claremont and Gary Pearson, BC Book Award nominee Don Gayton, CBC Literary prize winner poet Harold Rhenisch, distinguished editor and author Jim Taylor, poet and professor John Lent, animator and filmmaker Jim Cliffe, community activist Don Elzer, dancer David LaHay, architect Jim Meiklejohn, culinary artist and writer Heidi Noble, broadcaster Marion Barschel and others from a wide range of creative fields.
 
NEW! Up Chute Creek is a portrait of Okanagan landscape and people like no other. It is alternately passionate, joyful, heartbreaking, lyrical, quirky, and always wise, and always human, in the best sense. This is a book for the people of the Okanagan, both new and old, to treasure and to share.
» 208 pages, paperback, $20. Illustrated with photographs throughout.
» For information and to order, click HERE.
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