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2024 has been transformative for ABH. After some challenges, we have secured a space where our book arts community can thrive.
Upcoming Events
Treewhispers is an ongoing international collaboration that celebrates the connection between trees and humanity through handmade paper and artistic exploration. Participants contribute handmade paper rounds with personal memories, poems, images of tree rings, leaves or their beloved trees. These rounds, bound with bookbinding thread, form paper columns and create an ever-evolving forest of paper. As the project travels, it grows with new stories, new voices, and a collective reverence for nature.
This is a class for all levels with a focus on drawing, calligraphy, and incorporating nature, using trees as inspiration for creating fun and funky letters.
Students may bring in their own photos or cuttings of trees, branches, twigs, and leaves for inspiration, or they may use the instructor's samples. We will explore the interesting shapes found in these items and sketch letters based on those shapes. Then, we will illustrate the alphabets using paints, colored pencils, gel pens, markers, and other materials. Students will work at their own pace and may choose to create a variety of letterforms or a cohesive alphabet or short phrase.
Participants will learn the technique of pulp painting, creating imagery within sheets of handmade paper using plant pulp as a medium. We will design and cut our own stencils using nature as our inspiration. Then we will create sheets of paper, including round sheets, in keeping with the theme of the Treewhispers project. Participants will apply colored pulp using their stencil forms to the fresh sheets of paper. The wet sheets can be taken home to dry. Wear clothes that can get wet.
So you want to write for youth and you’re new to the business? Great. But writing stories for kids means going beyond the fun of a great idea. You must grasp the secrets of the industry while also mastering plot, word choice, word count, and voice. This workshop digs deep into the layers that create strong stories.
A self-described “humble negro printer,” Amos Paul Kennedy, Jr. is internationally recognized for his type-driven messages of social justice and Black power, emblazoned in rhythmically layered and boldly inked prints made for the masses. This event will celebrate the publishing of Kennedy’s monograph, Citizen Printer, from the Letterform Archive, with an author signing, an exhibition, and posters for sale at the event.