05 May From Craft to Art: Communicating Through the Medium of Book Art
Lyall Harris (book artist)
Thursday, May 5, 2016 / 3:00 PM
Special Collections, 3rd Floor of Davidson Library
Book art at its best is a medium where the maker’s keen use of the material components creates a faceted, more comprehensive and potent language to express content. In this way, the parts themselves, in the context of the piece, become bearers of meaning that work collectively to cause a kind of “transcendence,” from material to conceptual. This is where craft becomes art. Lyall Harris will present an array of these “literary art objects”—variously spawned by particular texts, “book” forms, specific materials, or images—to illustrate my creative process and the unique potential of book art as medium.
Since the late 90s, Lyall Harris’ artwork has been exhibited in more than one hundred solo and juried group shows and recognized with over twenty awards, including The George Hitchcock Prize for painting from the National Academy Museum, NY, and a Purchase Award in Book Art from the University of Utah for a fifteen-book site-specific project. Her book art can be found in numerous Special Collection libraries across the United States, among these, Yale (Haas Arts Library), Stanford (Green Library), Indiana University (Lilly Library), Davidson Library (UCSB) and Smith College (Mortimer Rare Book Room). Harris has been the recipient of fellowships at Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, NALL Foundation in Vence, France, and San Francisco’s Grabhorn Institute.
Sponsored by COMMA, UCSB Special Collections Library, and the IHC.