I was lucky enough to be on a business trip to New York again last week, and I so had the opportunity to visit the Center for Book Arts.
The Center is a great resource — they have a decent-sized Letterpress studio with several proof presses, an equally well-resourced Bindery area, an exhibition space (illustrated at the bottom of this post in a photo from their website), and enough space left over for a small shop selling hand-bound chapbooks, broadsides, and exhibition catalogues.
But the main purpose of my visit was to see The Collaged Accordion — an exhibition of Star Black’s large-scale accordion books that merge found texts & photographs and ephemera.
Star’s collaged accordion books are intricately layered with a fine sense of texture and the individual properties of the found images and materials. They combine echoes of Joseph Cornell’s boxes with a sensibility for the subtler textures and possibilities of paper.
I wish I could have spent a lot longer at the Center, but unfortunately I had to fly back to the UK that same day and had far too much to do.
If you get the chance to go to New York then the Center is definitely worth visiting.
