At 7 pm on Friday, September 12, 2008, renowned paper engineer, book artist, and educator Carol Barton will give a slide lecture on the history of pop-up and movable books. The presentation, which is free and open to the public, is cosponsored by Special Collections and the Craft Emergency Relief Fund. It will be held in the Special Collections reading room in Bailey/Howe Library on the UVM campus.
Barton’s 50-minute slide show will begin with the development of movable page formats within early Renaissance science texts. Movable illustrations from astronomical, navigational, mathematical and medical books will be shown. The presentation will also include a discussion of children’s pop-up books from the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, along with examples of current commercial and artist-made dimensional books. Barton will discuss die-cutting and hand-assembly processes used in the modern manufacture of pop-up books. Pop-up books from UVM’s book arts collection will be on display for the evening.
Carol Barton has been making artists’ books for over 25 years. Her work is exhibited internationally and is in numerous collections. Barton is on the faculty of the University of the Arts in Philadelphia where she teaches a course in book structures. She also teaches and lectures across the United States, including Penland School of Crafts, San Francisco Center for the Book, and New York’s Center for Book Arts. She served as curator for the Smithsonian Institution’s exhibition Science and the Artist’s Book.
On Sept. 13 and 14 at Studio Place Arts in Barre, Barton will lead volunteers on an extreme production adventure as they assemble 125 prototypes for the “Studio Protector,†an emergency preparedness/disaster survival wall chart for visual and performing artists. About the size of a wall calendar, it incorporates wheel charts, magnetic clasps, and pull-outs to deliver vital information in a visually stimulating and engaging way.
Parking is available at the visitor parking lot on College Street near the intersection of South Prospect Street. The lot is free in the evening. Handicap parking is available outside Bailey/Howe Library. A map of campus buildings and visitor parking lots is available at http://www.uvm.edu/~tpswww/
For more information about the Friday evening presentation, call 802-656-2138 or e-mail uvmsc@uvm.edu.