Book Arts Guild

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I joined the Book Arts Guild

(only $20 for a year-long membership) a couple of months ago after a friend and drawing teacher invited me to go to a BAG lecture by a book artist friend of hers who was in town for the event.  The lecture was held in the Special Collections/Map Room in the basement of the Suzallo Library on the UW campus.  I graduated from the University of Washington many years ago, and Suzallo was one of my favorite places, with its beautiful stained-glass-filled graduate reading room, giant card catalog (no longer in existence), and endless stacks.  I went to another lecture again recently, this time by Genie Shenk, who makes books based on dreams using mica.

After her presentation, we toured the exhibit of her work set up in the Special Collections reading room - somewhere I had never been and would like to visit again.  In addition to Genie's lovely work, the reading room had other book and library-related artwork mixed in amongst the tables and shelves.  One of my favorites was a real card catalog of about twenty drawers, each drawer containing its own mini-exhibit:  a drawer full of used pink pencil-top erasers; a drawer full of leaves; baby bottles with artwork inside them, etc.