Sarah Nicholls first found out about my trip and sent me an invite to the Center for Book Arts alongside wonderfully exhaustive list of gift, community, and DIY resources in NYC — a really wonderful introduction to the city. Unfortunately (as many things go) we didn’t have a ton of time in the area, but we did take up the invitation to visit and view the center.
Sarah Nicholls, program manager, and Roni Gross, long-time letterpress instructor
We had a brief tour of the center, which was buzzing with classes in both the book and print section, as the Center so often is. (Interestingly enough, they mentioned that summer is in many ways less busy for them.)
print area
type cabinets
presses!
one of the bookmaking classrooms
We then settled into the printshop area to talk about the various benefits (and drawbacks) of developing community within the book arts world. The Center, founded in 1974, has had all the struggles of trying to both solidify and expand the groups that it works with: working with a core group of book arts enthusiasts, but at the same time making sure not to alienate other interested parties. Within such a small field, we need to both hold onto the book arts community but also invite other artists and craftspeople (as well as the general public) into the many delights of book and paper arts. Because of the Center’s premier status as one of the top book-arts community centers in the world, other expanding book arts organizations can learn from the Center’s methods and challenges.
The Center also exemplifies the variety of people found working within the book arts world. It holds classes for dabblers in the field to world-class book artists in residence programs and the larger supportive members community. This last group was highlighted in the gallery, where members of the Center had worked on display.
one wing of the gallery
the inner gallery
thank you so much Sarah and Roni for talking with me! It was really enlightening and we hope to visit again soon.
