“ReSound,” the 2016 Art and the Book graduate program's collaborative artist book project was recently placed in Yale University's Haas Arts Library Special Collections.
The work of five graduate students, the artist book explores a visual response to sound within the landscape of Washington, D.C., using letterpress, screenprint and digital printing techniques in combination with journals, maps and process descriptions.
“The D.C. community was really important to this past group, and they wanted to visually represent sound throughout the city,” said Art and the Book Program Head and associate professor Kerry McAleer-Keeler, who added that the project incorporates all the skill sets that students learn throughout the program. “It touches on all the different media that they’ve experienced, with the goal being that they’ll be a fluid artist once they graduate.”
Every year, graduate students collaborate on an artist book in order to expose them to rigor of producing such a large project as well as the opportunity to collaborate with other artists.
This year’s book is unique in that it’s the first to incorporate technology since the program began producing collaborative artist book projects in 2011. The students wanted readers to be able to experience the sounds that inspired the visual representations in the book, so they included QR codes linked to audio recordings. “It’s interactive, which is great because art is growing and evolving, and interaction is a part of that,” McAleer-Keeler said.
Student participants included Ian Warren, Marisol Ardon, Sara Friedman, Magdalena Cordero and Rawan Alferaehy, and Art and the Book professor Sarah McDermott served as faculty advisor for the project.
Proceeds from the purchase of each year’s artist book are donated to Marginalia, the Art and the Book student group, to fund the following year’s project. Previous years’ projects have been placed in university libraries throughout the country.
“Resound” is represented by Vamp and Tramp, Booksellers, Inc., and is also available at the George Washington University’s Gelman Library Special Collections Research Center. To view the book at Gelman Library, please make an appointment here.