Kindred Spirits Bookbinding Exhibit

The Canadian Bookbinder's and Book Artist's Guild (CBBAG) recently launched their newest juried exhibit of handmade books. For this exhibit, all the work is inspired by Lucy Maud Montgomery, the woman and her work, to recognize the 150th anniversary of her birth.

The exhibit opened last month in Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island, alongside the Montgomery conference and the book launch of a new edition of The Blue Castle. The exhibit in Charlottetown continues until August 23, 2024.

The exhibit includes an impressive array of works by 30 members of CBBAG from all across Canada. Likewise, the exhibit will travel across Canada to be shown at several galleries over the next two years. The current exhibition schedule can be found on their website (www.kindred-spirits-bookarts.com) with additional dates and locations to be added in the future.

The exhibition website also includes photos of each of the books, including two made by NSBAG member Rhonda Miller.

Rhonda's full leather rebinding of her mother's 1956 copy of Anne of Green Gables and an artist's book featuring a quote with original watercolour and ink drawings, each with original marbling and custom enclosures.

From the Kindred Spirits website, you can also download and print pages to make a small booklet inspired by Montgomery's scrapbooks. The downloadable files and instructions are available here. A hands-on session was held when the Charlottetown exhibit began, allowing members of the public to make their own copy of this little booklet and similar sessions will be held at other locations as the exhibit travels across the country. Shown here, Rhonda Miller assists with the booklet-making session in Charlottetown last month. A summary of the exhibition's opening events is available here.

in combination, group exhibit

All too often, mark-making conjures up images created using paint, ink, charcoal or graphite. Gaspereau Valley-based printmaker Julie Rosvall challenges our mark-making perceptions with her exhibit Contexture on display as part of the group show in combination at The Craig Gallery, tucked away on the Dartmouth waterfront at Alderney Landing.

In addition to being a seasoned printmaker, Rosvall is an accomplished textile artist. Her practice combines these two disciplines to produce subtle yet provocative work that challenge our artistic perceptions.

In collaboration with letterpress printmaker and designer Tina Arsenault of Arquoise Press, Rosvall's prints are impressions of textile relief prints. Arsenault's letterpress prints are of knitting charts and pattern text. Some impressions are of the knitting itself, and other prints are text reproductions of knitting patterns with rudimentary illustrations. Generous borders centre these open, clean and sparse images, which are printed on blotter-thick paper.

The individual prints are displayed on a Craig gallery wall and are assembled in a limited-edition book.

Visual artist and bookbinder Ellen Timbre of Mule Mother Books, has assembled Rosvall's and Arsenault's single sheet, monochromatic prints (10" x 15") in a high-end limited-edition hand bound book, entitled Contexture, whose open spine, screw-post format (11" x 15") is commercially familiar to many for its ubiquitous use in commercial photo albums and scrapbooks. This popular format allows for easy handling and closer examination of their prints.

Nested within Contexture, and protected on both sides by a blank sheet, are thin, vellum-like clear plastic sheets, which are blind-embossed with the impression – without the use of ink, paints or dye – of Rosvall's knitted work.


The effect is subtle and forces the viewer to closer examine these textured impressions, which resemble alligator skin with its tactile ridges, bumps and indentations. Even though the marks are invisible, the textures created are indelible, inviting touch and exploration, made possible for the viewer by handling a display copy of Contexture. The display copy engages the viewer physically and enables the viewer to tactically experience Rosvall's work.

During the first pandemic lock-down, film maker and artist Andrea Dorfman committed herself to documenting her experiences by producing one mini-book each week.

Dorfman combines simple, accessible images and text set in a typewriter-style font to produce bright, multi-coloured mini-books. The mini-book format, which uses no adhesives or bindings, is achieved through folding, pinching and making a simple incision on a single rectangular piece of paper.

The resulting 8-panel mini-book, (folded size: 2.5" x 4"; flat size: 8" x 10"), is small enough to easily compile weekly content, but big enough to tell a visually-impactful, text-based short story/journal entry.


The Craig Gallery wall features 40 of Dorfman's mini-books displayed open and flat. This display results in half of the books' visuals and text appearing upside down (because the sheets are flat, not folded).


Far more accessible, are the variety of mini-books Dorfman has made available, (displayed atop a plinth), for visitors to read, handle and familiarize themselves with her work. When they do, they discover entertaining, reflective and sometimes self-deprecating first-person journal entries. The entire project can be viewed on Instagram at www.instagram.com/dorfmanorama.

Also of interest to book and paper artists, is work by "Aglennco... a queer, multimedia artist who fabricates futures using printmaking, textiles and illustrations."

One of their creations is a sheet of rectangular white felt (portrait format), that they have transformed to resemble a lined sheet of note paper through careful stitching of red thread (for the vertical margins) and blue thread (for the horizontal lines). A clever, simple and impactful rendering.

Rosvall, Dorfman and Aglennco are part of 8 artists whose work appears in the exhibit in combination at The Craig Gallery. in combination is part of Visual Arts Nova Scotia (VANS) 2022-23 mentorship program where established artists are successfully paired with emerging artists. in combination runs until July 30th, 2023.

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Review by Charles Salmon

Pages Turning, group exhibit

Pages Turning, at NSCAD's Anna Leonowens Gallery, is a gutsy group exhibition that forces the viewer to question what our concept of a book is, and what a book is supposed to look like. Curated by graduating student Neil Kehler, a photography major with an obvious interest in the book form. This exhibition captures the zeitgeist of how new millennial art and design students conceptualize books.

These super-sized, in-your-face, works of art are 'one of a kind' editions. Unlike most "hands off" exhibitions, here viewers are encouraged "please handle the work... do so with tenderness and care."

Metal Frame as Book
Crisp, clean paper sheets are attached at each end to two vertical metal screw posts that stand about 2.5 feet tall. The square metal rod base is about a foot wide. Each sheet of paper is separated from the other by evenly-spaced hexagon metal nuts. The 36 alternating sheets cover both sides of the posts, gently overlapping and progressively covering each other, like tree branches. When lifted, each page reveals an imprinted single line of text that stands alone, yet connects to the preceding page and the page that follows. Symmetrical, graceful and precise is the overall effect of this pushing-the-boundary book.

Canvas as Book
A singular rectangular gessoed canvas sheet with frayed sides and edges hangs like a medieval banner on the gallery wall.

This quiet, simple and subtle book commands our attention by its imposing size (19.5" wide by 36" long) which is contrasted by its faintly painted and difficult to read black text, making the viewer stop, linger and investigate.

Collage as Book
Instead of being elevated on a pedestal, this collage book's enormous open size (65" wide by 52" tall) demands that it be displayed on the gallery floor. Five double-page spreads of bold collage pages (using paint, paper and photocopies) comprise this multi-layered, rough texture book.

"The book as sovereign," forces the reader to acknowledge this reverse power play by either bending over or kneeling down to engage with its huge 32.5" by 52" pages. The physical effort is worth the visceral and visual reward.

Quilt as Book
Traditional quilts play with pattern and colour. This quilt plays with letters and words. The medium is the metaphor - fragments of fabric comprise fragments of text. This imposing (48" wide by 64.5" long) 12-panel quilt features white fabric block letters appliquéd to a bold red fabric background. The resulting text message wraps around the quilt border and circles inward. Sometimes the words appear in black fabric, calling out for our attention, like bold face text. Curiously, sometimes the letters are not appliquéd, but pinned to the fabric.

Each quilt block (14" wide by 15.5" long) is held together, not by tightly stitched thread, but at its corners with safety pins. As a result, when hung, the quilt does not lay flat, but sags with huge gaps that look like pouches. Upon closer examination, this optical illusion disappears. Is the subtext that the weight of the message is too great for the fabric to bear?

Almost all book structures require the reader to hold the book close in order to read and comprehend the text. However, in this case the opposite holds true. The reader needs to distance themselves from the book (i.e., quilt) in order to read and comprehend the text. Traditional bookbinding studies primarily focus on structure. The Pages Turning exhibition books integrate content with structure in unexpected and innovative ways.

Kehler's curatorial statement offers: "As time rolls on books may take on new purposes and forms of which we cannot conceive, and it is conceivable also that our relationship to them will change."

The Anna Leonowens Gallery is located on the cobblestoned Granville Street pedestrian mall of the Fountain Campus of NSCAD University in Halifax, Nova Scotia. Pages Turning is on display from July 11 to 15, 2023.

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Review by Charles Salmon

Collective Directions Exhibit

Collective Directions features a selection of works from the Halifax-based Manual Training Collective, at the Chester Art Centre in Chester, Nova Scotia. Of particular interest to book and paper artists are two tunnel books, created by film and video artist James MacSwain. MacSwain, who studied theatre arts, (U of A), describes his creations as follows: "Accordion books, or tunnel books or theatre books, are three dimensional objects... consisting of five accordion segments and a front 'proscenium' arch."


"The fifth segment is an image on acetate so that the accordion book becomes a light box that glows when a light shines on it... The inner segments contain the various characters and objects that give the accordion book its meaning."

MacSwain’s tunnel books have no covers, sleeves or slipcases, and are open and exposed for continual viewing.

Celebration, (created in 2018), features six Victorian characters framed by a "proscenium arch" of salmon-coloured marbled paper. We the viewer are exposed to a playful scene from a doll's house of static paper dolls that are frozen in movement as they dance in a foyer, to music from a pianist and a minstrel. The outdoors beckon through garden gates in the background which frame a mottled blue sky.

MacSwain's other work, Viewing Platform for the Planet Saturn, (created in 2013), is an exterior night setting featuring the luminous planet Saturn encircled by its famous ring, filling the star-filled night sky.

Two biblical figures in the mid-ground are as equally captivated by this celestial sight, as the crowd of 1930s fedora-topped men and women wrapped in turbans and furs in the foreground. Like the viewers in the tunnel book, our gaze is directed to the focal point of this creation - the legendary planet Saturn.

Both tunnel books are the same landscape format size: H 9" x W 10" x D 6". Paper, matt board, acetate and glue are listed as the materials used for both books, which make extensive use of photo prints. The effect is a more refined look than tunnel books crafted from hand-cut papers of various colours and textures.

Collective Directions is on display at the Chester Art Centre until July 16, 2023.

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Review by Charles Salmon

Made on the Mountain Studio Tour

A few NSBAG folks recently hit the road to visit West Brooklyn Mountain where a group of local artists opened their studios for their annual Made on the Mountain Studio Tour.

In addition to a couple of amazing pottery studios and some spectacular metal work, this tour had a number of book-arts-related participants. Firstly, we met Ruth Legge who had her "Tree Dweller Paper Sculptures" on display. Ruth has been a bookbinder and conservator for over 40 years, thus accumulating a vast collection of small pieces of beautiful paper which she uses to make these intricate sculptures.

Down the road, we visited Julie Rosvall's studio, Ink.Paper.Press. Julie is a knitter who creates exquisite knitted lace and then uses that to make prints on paper, using her custom-built etching press.

It was great to see our fellow NSBAG member and letterpress printer Katie Prescott of Woodshed Press exhibiting her work at Julie’s studio. Katie’s printshop is in Port George but she had her Nova Scotia themed cards and posters on display and a button press so we could make ourselves a button to take home.

Another letterpress printer, Tina Arsenault of Arquoise Press, had work on display at this location. Tina's studio is in Canaan, NS. She has a large collection of vintage ornamental type which she uses to make letterpress prints on her various antique presses. She brought this handy little press with her for the day so visitors could print a bookmark to take home.

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Submitted by Rhonda Miller

Artists' Books at the Mary E. Black Gallery

The Embodied Press: Queer Abstraction and the Artists' Book, is a retrospective exhibit of artists' books, currently on display at the Mary E. Black Gallery in Halifax. Curated by Anthea Black, the exhibit features the work of 14 artists with works spanning over 45 years, from the 1970s to present day. The 14 featured artists are: Nadine Bariteau, Joshua Beckman, Lukaza Branfman-Verissimo, Edie Fake, Tatana Kellner, Kate Laster, Emily McVarish, Heidi Neilson, Lyman Piersma, Pati Scobey, Miller & Shellabarger, Stan Shellabarger, Nicholas Shick, Clarissa Sligh.

This exhibit features "artists' books and publications by queer and transgender artists, from graphic novels and collage-works to bold experiments with letterpress, screenprinting, video, performance, and risograph." Curator Anthea Black, a Canadian artist and writer who is an Assistant Professor at California College of the Arts, recently gave an artist's talk at NSCAD about the exhibition, where they posed the question: "So what happens when a book object (or a body) 'frustrates legibility' or becomes difficult to read? It must be felt. Held in our hands. Absorbed."

The artists' books on display are absorbing, but unfortunately, they cannot be felt or handled. Many are protected under plexiglass cases. The majority of the works are strongly focused on content. Form seems to follows content. It's as though structure is an afterthought. That being said, there is an integration of content, structure, and message.

The precision of these well-constructed artists' books is impressive. They consist mainly of editions versus one-of-a-kind creations. Nicholas Shick's series of 9 books entitled Radiate, is pure eye candy with each volume being a series of shades of one rainbow colour. Bound using the drum leaf technique and letterpress printed on Mohawk superfine paper stock, the books are displayed with all the pages fanned out and is a visual magnet.

Also on display are a few zines (which are saddle-stitched) and Untitled Hand Book (1, 2, 3, 4, 5 and 6), by Miller & Shellabarger, one of which is labelled as "case binding" but is constructed using a Japanese stab binding (tortoise shell pattern). The other letterpress books in this edition have pages printed in brown, pale blue and gold jewel tones that positively shimmer. It is the content, not the structure, that dazzles us. The pages entice the viewer to caress and touch.

Lamination is used for a few books and these books in particular challenge our notion of book structure. Kate Laster's Yearbook Photo Missing consists of multi-coloured, laminated tinsel (that resembles ribbons) and found photos. However, it is the backs of the photos, each of which are each inscribed (and resemble cue cards), which face the viewer, not the photo image. And there is more transparent plastic than there is content. Blank paper pages in book construction are rarely questioned. Then why are pages that are made of transparent plastic so unsettling?

Other distinctive laminated paper cut accordion fold books by Kate Laster include Waiting Game - Bookfair, an oversized four panel "pamphlet" (standing about 20 inches in height) that is reminiscent of Papel Picado, Mexican cut-out paper art. However, Kate Lester’s approach is not solely using cut-out patterns and graphics as Mexicans do, but Laster has substituted stylized letters of varying sizes that hint of folk art. The cut-out stencils get their power from seeing right through them. Laster also riffs on this form in Roadmap Accordion, where the book is laid out on the display table (like a road map) and the cut-out stencils get their power from the shadows created from the strong beam of light overhead. In this case, the message is amplified by the light and is ephemeral, like the material.

There is An Ocean by Joshua Saul Beckman is an 18-panel accordion fold book with six horizontal zig-zag lines of blue and grey thread that run continuously and precisely for the entire length of the book. The lines appear to have been machine-sewn without ripping the paper. Stan Shellabarger has three accordion fold books on display, each of varying lengths, whose panels feature a series of swirly dots set against white and pale blue backgrounds, with solid dark blue front and back cover panels. The dots give this otherwise static display a fanciful sense of movement. Random dots are also used in Heidi Neilson's Atlas of Punctuation (letterpress in case binding), which only features periods. While the dots may appear randomly placed on the page, one is left wondering are they simply punctuation place holders for the text that has been completely removed.

As Anthea Black notes, "Artists in The Embodied Press make important visual and material choices in their use of printing techniques, sequencing, and manipulation or absence of text... These ideas find great resonance in the artists' book field as it radically expands the ways books can be produced, read, and understood as a form of culture."

The Mary E. Black Gallery is run by Centre for Craft Nova Scotia and is located at 1061 Marginal Road, Halifax, beside Pier 21. This exhibit runs until Sunday May 7, 2023.

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Review by Charles Salmon

A Collection of Handmade Books

Rhonda Miller has accumulated a collection of over 80 handbound books and artists' books, made by nearly as many bookbinders and book artists around the world. For our March meeing, Rhonda brought most of this collection for the group to examine and discuss.

Her collection was acquired through a variety of book swaps over several years. Rhonda has participanted in many different types of swaps and she disucssed the different formats that she had participated in and how this had been a great way to build a varied collection for studying and teaching. The collection includes handbound books in a wide range of styles and structures utlizing many different materials and techniques, both familiar and unfamiliar, common and uncommon.

Blank books make up a substantial part of the collection, some of which can be seen here in the first two photographs. Most of these swaps occured between 2007 and 2012. Some of the swaps were documented on her bookbinding blog at the time, where there are also pictures of a few of the many books that she made and sent out to others.

Other swaps were more focused on content-driven books and artists' books, including numerous miniatures from an edition exchange, most of which can be seen here.

Later this year, the Nova Scotia Book Arts group is planning to host a blank book swap within the group. More details about how to participate will be shared soon.

Update: Check here for more details about our book swap.

Nocturne "Legacy": printing, collage, and origami

Nocturne, Halifax's October contemporary arts festival, is now in its 15th year. This year's theme of "Legacy," featured installations of particular interest to book and paper arts enthusiasts.

Outside the Dawson Print Shop on the Granville Mall, Katherine Taylor, a NSCAD book arts and letterpress instructor, was running a "hands on" demonstration of a table top printing press. This family-friendly exhibit let people experience making a colour pressure print. Based on Ms. Taylor's Ukrainian legacy, she had the word "Family" carved using Cyrillic letters, into a lino block. It was then printed on a base print of an intricate flower pattern, reminiscent of paper filigree. The chipboard base print pressure plate was cut using a Cricut machine, which can reproduce and cut most paper material and almost any pattern that is uploaded to a computer. The design possibilities for cards, posters, end plates and text blocks is virtually limitless.

The Legacy theme continued over at Inkwell letterpress studio on South Park Street, with another interactive print/paper activity. Billed as "Mind your Ps and Qs," prints of common English language phrases originating from the print industry, were created on a 1921 cast iron printing press that uses carbon negative ink made from algae. Like the Dawson Print shop, each participant went home with a print.

On Lower Water Street, the Halifax Collage Collective created a large, paper-based mural collage. Participants were asked to comb through paper-based materials and ephemera like old magazines, journals, drawings, printed material, etc., and select items that they felt contributed to their personal legacy. Using scissors, glue and drawing materials, a paper-based collage was created that encouraged participants to reflect on their personal legacy.

At the Chase Gallery (located in the NS Archives, on the Dalhousie University campus), a group show based on identity called "I Am What I Am," featured works using materials ranging from acrylic, paint and fabric to metal, found objects and paper mâché. Among those featured, was Miya Turnbull, a Japanese Canadian artist living in Nova Scotia whose art practice is informed by Japanese paper work. Among Ms. Turnbull's works was a series of Origami Self Portraits (of crane, frog, heart, box and butterfly) created from colour photographic prints incorporating the artist's eyes and lips. This original approach in utilizing deconstructed facial features in origami was both mesmerizing and unsettling.

While Nocturne is over, "I Am What I Am" continues until Oct. 29th, 2022.

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Review by Charles Salmon

Welcome to the Nova Scotia Book Arts Group

The Nova Scotia Book Arts Group has recently come together with the intention of establishing a local, active, and connected community of book and paper arts enthusiasts and practitioners. Based in Halifax, Nova Scotia, we invite folks in this area and across the province, to get in touch with us if you would like to be involved and we will add you to our email mailing list. We will post more information and meeting details on this blog regularly so you can also check back here to stay informed.

We intend to have regular meetings in Halifax and we have a variety of programming ideas that we're excited to share with the local book arts community. For example, our meetings will include some guest speakers, demonstrations, book arts projects, book swaps, etc. A schedule for the upcoming months will be announced soon. We look forward to having more folks involved and gathering your input for future programming.

Who is invited?
Any local book arts practitioner or enthusiast.

What are book arts?
A category of art forms that include traditional skills such as bookbinding, papermaking, paper marbling, letterpress printing, and newer methods of artmaking inspired by the form and function of books. 

Who are the inaugural organizing members?

Rhonda Miller, Stephanie Morley, Marilynn Rudi, and Charles Salmon.