Pictures of Awesomeness

I know it has been oh-so-long since I have posted, but I have been busily finishing up my final projects for class. I took the day off from work today to trudge around campus in the cold and rain (yea, stylish galoshes!) carrying very large, very expensive vellum paper, and to review for my presentation for my lit class tonight. In a little while I’m going to pick up the prints for my final photography project, then stop in at the Digital Media Center on campus to (I hope) get my artist’s statement printed on the same vellum paper I’m presenting the photos on. Since I went to these awesome libraries and took pictures of these incredible books, I’ve decided to present my final photos in book-form. I’m hand-making a book, which will be pretty damn cool if I can actually pull it off. Arts and crafts have never been my schtick and I always get nervous when there’s glue involved, but this project has minimal glue, so I’m hopeful. If it actually turns out, it just might erase those years in elementary school art class when my teacher (Mrs. Ewald, whose name I refuse to change to protect her identity: she taught in Wooster City Public Schools in Wooster, Ohio) made me feel so ashamed for being a lousy artist that I started throwing away my art projects and claiming that either she or I had lost them just so I wouldn’t have to turn them in. In the spirit of the books I’ve been looking at, I set up my artist statement in two columns, using Olde English, and I plan to have two illuminated letters (they won’t be all that fancy: but they’ll have some color and gold highlights). But since my pages are 14″ x 17″ I have to take it to a fancy (expensive) place to get it printed. In the rain. Did I mention the rain? So it damn well better work.

Since this and my paper/presentation for my lit class are pretty much all I’ve been doing for the last several weeks, I’ve posted the final pictures that I’m using in the book for your viewing pleasure. (I took hundreds of pictures, but had to limit it to 30 since each one took some time to touch up in Photoshop because the lighting was pretty terrible in both libraries, and I have a pretty shitty camera, which I barely know how to use.) These were taken at George Peabody Library, The Sheridan Libraries, Johns Hopkins University and John Work Garrett Library, The Sheridan Libraries, Johns Hopkins University (which is part of Evergreen House), both in Baltimore. Paul Espinosa at Peabody Library, and Earle Havens and Amy Kimball at Garrett Library all shared their time, knowledge, and bibliophila with me, and I am deeply grateful to all of them. By this time next week I’ll be finished with class and can get back into my regular posting habits. I plan to soon write about what this project meant to me because it was just such a friggin’ cool thing to do.

Peace out.

Come in, stay awhile

Yea, Baltimore publishers!