#instruction sessions

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In the Land of Tiny Books

Our Head of Special Collections Max Yela has collaborated for decades with Milwaukee artist and art professor at the Milwaukee Institute of Art and Design (MIAD) Leslie Fedorchuk (on the left in the first image; Max is on the right). This semester, Leslie is teaching a MIAD course called "Magical Miniatures" and she brought her class over for a discussion and review of artists books that use small scale as expression.

While Max is not very fond of miniatures or the miniaturization of books, he does like books that are small for compositional reasons. In fact, one of his favorite artists books, In Here Out There (third image) by the late Minnesota artist Jody Williams, is quite small (5 x 7 cm). Since we hold about 95% of Jody Williams's work and about 90% of the small editioned work of Peter & Donna Thomas, after a discussion, the class spent time reviewing selected works by these artists, plus about a dozen others by local book artists.

This was the first time these art students, many of them Juniors and Seniors, had ever encountered artists books before, and all expressed that it was a transformative experience. We look forward to seeing some of the book work that comes out of the assignments for this class!

The photographs shown here were taken by MIAD Web Content Specialist Olivia Langby.

View more posts with artists books.

View more posts with work by Jody Williams.

View more posts with works by Peter and Donna Thomas.

View more posts on visiting classes.

View our online bibliography of the works of Peter and Donna Thomas.

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Typography Tuesday

Today we had a visit from a Typography I class from the Milwaukee Institute of Art and Design taught by Leah Good. The purpose of the Type I course is to "provide students with an understanding of the integral use of typography in the overall design concept." Max Yela, UWM Special Collections Librarian, pulled a wide array of books from our collection that use type as image and to create image.

Everyone had a great time engaging with the materials and the session finished with a discussion of how using these materials informed the students' understanding of type and what it can do. Here's hoping we get to see some of their final type specimen posters!

-- Alice, Special Collections Department Manager

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A busy semester of class instruction!

As we’ve posted before, this has been a very busy semester of instruction sessions for us, with 55 class visits, and if we add Max’s History of Books & Printing and Independent Reading and Research for Artists Books courses which both meet weekly in Special Collections, that’s another 30 classes! For a small, two-FTE operation, 85 class sessions is pushing our limits, but its also exhilarating!  

Luckily, we have some pretty competent graduate interns to help lighten some of the load. For example, every semester for over 20 years, we have taught the early medieval manuscripts sessions for Art History 101 using our extensive collection of manuscript facsimiles. This can mean 5 to 8 back-to-back, one-hour sessions over two days. Today we finished this semester’s 7 class sections of Art History 101, and our graduate interns Katie, Morgan, and Sarah handled them masterfully, offering over 80 students content, insight, and hands-on experience! Above are images from Sarah Finn’s session. Sarah is a graduate student in the coordinated History and Information Studies programs. Sarah started working for us as an undergraduate student in the summer of 2017, became a graduate intern in fall 2018, and will remain with us though spring of 2021. Lucky us!! 

Thank you, Katie, Morgan, and Sarah!!

Click on the images above to see what the students are investigating.

View previous posts on our instruction sessions.

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Artist’s Prints in Book Form

My, oh my, have we had a busy these past few weeks!!! All our major public programs are now behind us, but class visits and student research continue apace at a heavy clip, with 26 instruction sessions this month alone! For example, printmaker and art instructor Kari Garon brought her “Introduction to Print and Narrative Forms” class in last night for a review and discussion of original printmaking within the frame of a narrative book environment. There were 16 students and a service dog named Valentine.All were intently engaged for 2.5 hours.

Over the decades we have built a strong connection to our Art & Design Department. They have informed our collecting and programming, and we have influenced their curriculum and pedagogy. Our department head Max taught “Book Arts Concepts” in Art & Design for 10 years, and because of our activities in collaboration with the department, the book arts have become an integral part of their Foundations curricula, and what used to be the Printmaking Area was formally renamed Print and Narrative Forms to reflect the level of book arts instruction in that unit.

Click on the images above to lean what everyone is reading!

View previous posts on our instruction sessions.

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Who said learning Latin is dull?

This semester, UWM Latin instructor Deanna Wesolowski’s classes have been focusing on reading medieval Latin texts. Today she brought two of her classes, composed of beginning and 2nd-year students, to Special Collections to view examples from our extensive facsimile collection of manuscript books originally produced from the late 7th to the mid 15th centuries. The goal was to view and attempt to read a range of Latin texts in a long temporal span of paleographic hands, with their various ligatures and abbreviation conventions, and to discuss how reading Latin was transformed by the 13th century through the gradual introduction of standardized word order, spaces between words, punctuation, enlarged initial capitals, and the use of the Carolingian minuscule.

We were a bit surprised, but absolutely delighted with the level of enthusiasm  the students brought to their engagement with the texts, and with the many great questions and comments they formulated. For these students at least, learning Latin is certainly not dull!

Click on the images to find out what they’re reading.

View other Special Collections instructions sessions from this semester.

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Studying 19th- and 20th-Century Printmaking

Yesterday we were visited by Sarah Schaefer's Art History class "Introduction to Prints and Printmaking: History and Techniques." They reviewed a wide range of printmaking techniques and styles from the 19th and 20th centuries in books and individual prints held in Special Collections. We found it so visually interesting and instructive that we decided to keep a selection from this presentation on display in our reading room as an impromptu pop-up exhibit until the end of the week, April 5.  If you’re in town, Please stop by and see it 10 am to 5 pm!

On display are etchings, engravings, mezzotints, aquatints, woodcuts, wood engravings, lithographs, chromolithographs, steel engravings, and serigraphs. You may view and handle:

An extra-illustrated book from the 17th-century bound with all kinds of printmaking techniques from the 17th to the early 19th century.

Original wood engravings by the two earliest popularizers of the medium, Thomas Bewick in Britain and Alexander Anderson in the U.S.

Mid-19th century lithographic prints by the French printmaker and caricaturist Honoré Daumier.

An 1849 work by two great promoters of chromolithography in books, Owen Jones and Henry Noel Humphreys.

Velvety mezzotints by John Martin for an 1827 publication of Paradise Lost.

Scores of steel-plate engravings from an 1860 publication on Distinguished English and American Female Poets.

Original woodcuts designs, wood-engraved images, and distinguished typeface designs in the works of early English and American fine presses from 1892-1904, including Kelmscott, Essex House, Vale, and Elston.

Original serigraph prints by one of the earliest promoters of silk-screen printing as an art medium Max Arthur Cohn (who, btw, was the father of UWM professor emerita of Art History, Jane Waldbaum).

A 1982 fine-press production of Alice in Wonderland by the great American book designer, letterpress printer, and master wood engraver Barry Moser, with an extra suite of original, signed wood engravings.

And while you're here, you may also view our retrospective exhibition on the work of the American color wood engraver, book designer, and letterpress printer Gaylord Schanilec, "Luminous Books: The Work of Gaylord Schanilec," which remains on view through May 17.

Click on the images for their identifying captions.

View posts on other recent instruction sessions.

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Book History Class in the Letterpress Studio

Every semester, when the Information Studies class History of Books & Printing (INFOST 603) begins its segment on early printed books, Max brings his students over to the Letterpress Studio in the UWM Department of Art & Design to handle and set type, get it locked up on a Vandercook Universal 1 flat-bed proofing press, and print up a collaborative broadside. That session took place last night, and our guide, as in previous semesters, was Adam Beadel, former INFOST 603 student, current Art & Design graduate student, and proprietor of Team Nerd Letterpress in Milwaukee’s Walker’s Point neighborhood.

Last semester we began a nonsense abecedarium in which each student, the teacher, and the session leader were assigned a letter for which they were responsible for composing a nonsense phrase in a typeface of their choice. Once the combined lines were locked up on the press bed, ink was applied and they all got to crank the press (which is always the fun part). Last semester we completed a broadside through the letter J (Incipit Abecedarium). Last night we continued the process (Abecedarium Continua), completing a broadside edition through the letter Q (A Quorum of Quavering Quails Quickly Questioned the Queen).

As always, it was a boatload of fun, and very instructive after reviewing incunabula and learning about the invention of the press, and early type founding and letterpress printing. Thanks Adam!!

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2D Concepts and the Artist’s Book

Last week, two sections of 2D Concepts taught by UWM art lecturer Cynthia Hayes made visits to Special Collections to discuss color theory through the use Josef Albers’s Interaction of Color. This week, those same two classes are just beginning their artist’s-book assignment, so they stopped by again to discuss book-art’s concepts and review a broad selection of artists’ books from our extensive collection.

We identified some of the key concepts we cover with 2D Concepts classes in a previous post. When it comes time to review the artists’ books themselves, we ask that the stuendts critique the works for 2D-, 3D-, and time-based composition. At the end of an hour of review, the students articulate their general response to the experience, and what they found compositionally successful or unsuccessful. This discussion offers them a way of thinking about their own approaches to the book. 

We have conducted instruction sessions for multiple 2D Concepts classes every semester for over 20 years, and we never tire of hearing their responses. Many of these students go on to work professionally in the book form, and then we acquire those works to inspire a new generation of artists. Oh, the joys of being a special collections librarian!

Click on the images to find out what they’re reading.

View other Special Collections instructions sessions from this semester.