"Book Club" exhibit at Hermes Gallery

For the past few weeks, the Nova Scotia Book Arts Group has been involved in its first gallery show, as part of the Book Club exhibit at Hermes Gallery in Halifax. The show included book and text themed works by several members of the gallery and NSBAG was invited to contribute a selection of handbound books to be part of the exhibition as well. The exhibit closes on April 21 at 6pm, so there are a few days left if you want to go!

Our members contributed thirteen handbound books showcasing a wide range of binding techniques and materials, as shown below. As well, we were able to publicly exhibit the Community Art Journal that we made last year so members of the public could see the finished book.

	Deborah Maurer Leather Journal Hand-dyed and painted leather with linocut printed skull image. Bound using a crossed structure binding technique. You can find Deborah on Instagram: @debmaureroriginals.
	Larry Colwell Double Accordion Two blank accordion books bound together with a hardcover case enclosure. Full cloth covering with debossed cover design.
	Marilynn Rudi Handbound Journal Hardcover accordion structure with spine reinforcement and button closure. Full cloth covering and original marbled paper paste-downs inside.
	Heather Loney Hand-cut Treescape Original artwork and paper cutting. Hardcover binding using a case binding technique. You can see more of Heather's work on Instagram: @hkeloney.
	Odyssean Press "Untitled (melancholia)" Modified casebound album binding with letterpress poetry. These two artist books explore the wilds of the mind as if they were a stormy sea. Poetic fragments are printed on top of previous layers, obscuring or highlighting certain words to both hide from the viewer and invite closer reflection. See more on Instagram: @odysseanpress
	Ariel Bissett Handbound Journal Hardcover journal with exposed chain stitch binding. Bookcloth spine and corners with original marbled paper. You can find Ariel on Instagram: @arielbissett
	Stephanie Morley Medieval Binding Cutaway A cutaway binding demonstrates the book construction by exposing the binding process. This is an example of a Gothic binding sewn on raised cords with sewn endbands. Spalted beech boards shaped by hand, linen cords laced in & pegged. Spine partially covered in leather. Rawhide strap closure with hand-shaped brass clasp. Handmade paper, handspun linen cords & thread, made by the binder. Deerhide tanned by the binder. Stephanie is on Instagram: @morleyambiguous.
	Charles Salmon "Opening" Artist's book exploring a non-traditional organic book shape. Cover is made using papier mâché; textblock is a concertina structure supported by a knotted spine. Clasp is a gesso-painted apple stem and paper tube. Custom 5-sided box with fall-away sides and an origami base to support the book inside. The hand-lettered text is an old English blessing for an apple.
	Sally Crawford "Marking Time" A folded book made from original botanical eco-printed papers with multiple surfaces and hidden pockets to inspire additional content creation. You can find Sally on Facebook: SallyCrawford.Art.
	Emily Doucette Blank Journal Handbound journal, drawn-on boards, bound in quarter leather with raised bands and hand-tooled decorations on the spine. Sewn endbands and marbled boards. You can see more work on Emily's Instagram: @awltomorrowsbindings
	Rhonda Miller "Bookbinding Materials & Techniques 1700-1920" Handbound book, bound using a split-board library binding with sewn endbands. Quarter leather with original marbling on covers and matching fore edge marbling. You can find Rhonda on Instagram: @myhandboundbooks
	NSBAG Community Art Journal Created during Nocturne 2023. Members of the public were invited to create the pages based on the prompt, “What is your favorite thing?” You can watch our video on Youtube to see the artwork inside. The book structure is a hardcover binding with an exposed longstitch sewn on ribbon supports. Bound by Rhonda Miller.

Thank you to Frankie and Peter at Hermes Gallery for inviting us to be part of this show! This is the final week for the exhibit. The gallery is open 12pm - 6pm on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday.

Exploring Nocturne 2023

Nocturne 2023 took place last weekend, my partner and I enjoyed the nice weather and wandering through the city filled with art. There were nearly 100 artists involved in Nocturne this year. We started the evening going to the Book Arts Group event on Agricola Street. The space was full when we got there, so we had to wait a second to get a place at the table. All of the people creating pages were quiet, intent on their work. Over in the corner you could print a bookmark, and people continued to pour in and ask what we were doing. All those visitors and craft supplies helped NSBAG create this amazing community art journal.

After using stamps and scraps of paper to design our page for the art journal, we continued on to the next exhibition. While walking down Agricola Street towards other Nocturne locations, we stumbled on an exhibition of the new work of Geordan Moore (@quarrelsomeyeti), the time has come, to talk of many things. It was in the basement shop of Frabjous Delights Specialty Foods. The small space allowed the artist's bright prints to easily draw the gaze of visitors. His art mostly showed animals intertwined in struggle either with a ship, a house, or the landscape. The shop also featured free chocolate tastings. (The line was too long so we didn’t get any!) We climbed back up the stairs and walked on.

Rambler's Coffee was our next stop, for the Stereo (for) Rough Waters X ODE (to) THE HUSTLE installation. As soon as we entered the door we could see a large projection of a film, with machinery in black and white whirring continually on the screen. Trades workers stood beside, in front, or alongside the machines pulling fresh newspapers off of the presses and checking them for errors. The next scene was of people using a smaller machine to slice a large sheet of metal. The ongoing motion of the machines matched the ongoing film which slowly flipped between shots, machines, and factories. Music, created by a collaborator of the filmmaker, complemented the rugged aesthetics of the film. The film was also accompanied by photographs lining the wall of the coffee shop. Each black and white image emphasized the human working alongside a huge machine. The film write-up discussed how the artists Nathanial Cole, Nathan DB Simmons and Dilshan collaborated to make a film backed with hip-hop tracks. The space communicated the increasing pressures of city life through hectic overwhelming images and sound.

Across the street was the Nomnom Truck at Cuts and Paste Gallery, which was much quieter than Ramblers. The majority of the gallery was taken up by a pink 'food' truck. The food truck menu provided an artist with "ingredients" to build the visitor a collage. We chose a black background, "space," crayons, "symbols," and yearbook photos from the menu, and watched as the artist built the collage right before our eyes. It was a fun, interactive experience, and you could tell the artist, Allie (@art.angelgirl) was also enjoying their time making on-demand collages.

With our collage wrapped in classic checkered street food paper, we walked down to Seven Bays where Cadence had one of their three exhibition sites for their Cordel Literature Treasure Hunt. The front porch of Seven Bays was covered in laundry lines with tiny colorful zines clipped all over them featuring original stories and linocuts in handmade booklets.

This project was a Nocturne-wide scavenger hunt to build a full zine. At each location there was only one chapter of each story, encouraging visitors to visit all three sites in order to collect all three chapters of their chosen zine. The windy evening was filled with the fluttering of all of the pages around us. As each guest grabbed a zine, they replaced them with a wish, leaving the cluttered space full of stories with a less dense color field of paper wishes. Each of us chose a chapter and continued to the next exhibit.

Due to the sprawling nature of Nocturne, we chose to drive to the next location. We resurfaced from the Central library's underground parking lot. We were met with haunting echoes coming from the patio behind the library. The noise came from an installantion called Qiaqsutu. A group of large, otherworldly white statues, a mixture of draped cloth and huge masks of distorted faces or animal skulls. On the chests of the statues scenes played over and over with unnerving music. Images of water flowing and animals running. The statues towered over the crowd of viewers, making us feel a part of their world, rather than them being a part of ours. The crowd stood silently, listening to the haunting sounds, a mix between sobbing, singing, talking, animals calling, and water running.

From the information plaque, I learned the artists Jamesie Fournier, Coco Lynge, Erin Gingrich, Malayah Enooyah Maloney and Taqralik Partridge were using the sounds of Inuit voices to lament the loss of animals and land that hold immense cultural significance to the Inuit people. These haunting statues were warnings, and symbols of grief. They pleaded with the viewer to do their part to stop the loss of habitats and animal life due to climate change and the mismanagement of natural resources.

On the other side of the library were beautiful quilt stars called Future Fragments stretched over the windows, a project by Millbrook First Nation youth. The large quilts took over the facade in a riot of color and pattern, transforming the usually hard-edged windows into soft textile shapes.

Our last stop of the night was to Inkwell Boutique's project, I Made You a Mixed Tape. When we arrived there was a line snaking through the entire store. Everyone had gathered to try their hand at printmaking. A 100-year-old printing press was set up with a Nocturne-specific printing block featuring an old fashioned cassette. After waiting our turn, we printed the design and admired the smooth workings of the old machine.
  
We had to end the night there, and were unable to complete the zines we had started. Our friends who continued walking through the art exhibits said that once they got to Cadence's second location on the waterfront, all of the zines were gone. It's funny to think that I might hold the last piece to someone's zine, and we all got to take a little part of the story home, leaving behind our wishes to flutter in the night.

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Written by Taryn Neufeld

NSBAG at Nocturne 2023: Photo Journal

On October 14th, 2023 the Nova Scotia Book Arts Group participated in Nocturne!

The project was simple: NSBAG provided art supplies and ample table space for anyone to answer the question "What is your favourite thing?" on a piece of paper which would then be bound into a community journal. And what a turn out! As it was the first year NSBAG participated in Nocturne we had no idea how many people may show up and we were thrilled by the amount of people that came by to take a look, the people that took a chance to sit down and take part, and by the care in the pages that were created! 

One of my favourite moments to experience, which happened a few times throughout the night while I was there, was watching someone hesitatingly take a seat. The idea of a blank page can be intimidating and it can be surprising to be handed an assignment (no matter how benign) when you aren't expecting it. Usually this would be followed by a trepidatious stare down at the blank paper below them for a few, long moments. But eventually every person must have had a version of the thought "I guess I have to start somewhere," and they'd reach over to a stamp or a marker or a scrap of paper and after the first mark every single person seemed to lose themselves to the joy of creating. I think people truly love to have fun with art and when they allow themselves the moment to sit down and play they will lean in. I also wonder if the promise that their page would be bound into a journal with care by a experienced bookbinder into a beautiful journal lended some novelty and prestige that pushed people to create something special for our book. 

But enough philosophizing! Let's get to the photos! I volunteered to document the event and popped in every few hours to take photos of the night as it unfolded.

The day started with setup: the NSBAG organizers were all assembled, alongside a few more book artist volunteers. Set up included putting up signs, hanging lights, and distributing art supplies around the table.

Our sign on Agricola beckoned people in to share "What is your favourite thing?"

Charles brought some very fitting marbled balloons!

Craft scissors, pencil crayons, highlighters, paper scraps, stamps, and more!

Charles and Marilynn set up the sign for the sidewalk.

A real highlight was the presence of Katie Prescott of Woodshed Press. When visitors stepped into the space they were welcome to print their own bookmark with the help of Katie and her letterpress. I thought this was such a wonderful addition (both Katie and her press!) and often eased people into the idea of sitting down for longer to make a page for the journal. I got to make a bookmark myself and let me tell you, there is very little that is as satisfying as pulling the roller down a press. In the end everyone walked away with a bookmark printed with the iconic Stephen King quotation: “Books are a uniquely portable magic.”

Follow Katie on instagram at @woodshedpress!

Katie makes sure everything is aligned.

The finished product next to the moveable type.

And then happy Nocturne partakers starting pouring in! It was a blast seeing people of all ages, families, and walkers by, come in and use the supplies at their disposal in such different ways. The question of the night, What is your favourite thing?, was interpreted in a myriad of ways, some funny, some sincere, some very artful, some very simple. 

As the pages started to pile up it was time for Rhonda Miller, NSBAG organizer and the evening's resident book binder, to start binding the pages together to create the community journal. The beautiful covers had been made by Rhonda earlier in preparation for the evening.

Rhonda Miller starts sewing together the pages.

This gorgeous front page was created by Stephanie Morley.

The binding in it's final stages.

So many beautiful pages!

The night was a real joy. The Nova Scotia Book Arts Group got to share their love of book arts with their city and the people that took the time to sit and make with us got to experience the joy of book making. The final physical journal will be available for viewing in future and a video is being made as a digital record for everyone to experience the wonderful pages. It will be posted here on our blog and also on our instagram and youtube channel, stay tuned!

I had a great time peeking in every few hours, seeing the pages pile up, chatting with everyone about book arts, and documenting the event. Thanks for reading, maybe you can join us next time!

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Written by Ariel Bissett