The book is a hand-held technology that has completely transformed human culture. Bookworks brings together the many craft, art, and design practices that are integral to making books. This studio class integrates a range of media and materials, content, sequences, and structures into one movable, tactile object. Projects incorporate each artist's interests and work inventively with a variety of traditional and experimental book forms. We will refine our making skills alongside investigations of the book as an expressive place for form and content through storytelling, personal narrative, curatorial impulses, and commentary on broader cultural and political conditions of contemporary life. This class draws equally from Bay Area book art history within the California Arts and Crafts Movement, and the exuberant resurgence of DIY and self-publishing in contemporary art.

From folded accordions and Japanese bindings, to hardcover casebound books and transformative box constructions, Bookworks 1 covers hands-on skills, techniques, and personal narrative development. Weekly demonstrations and individual projects guide students through experimentation and towards a comprehensive body of artwork in the book form. The class includes an introduction to letterpress printing with handset type and polymer plates, artist multiples and editioning, text and image sequencing, with field trips and special collection visits to view historical and contemporary book art works. Open to beginning and advanced students from any major.