Association hosted its annual meeting featuring Craig Dworkin, a professor of English, as the Opening Speaker in the OSH Auditorium. Photo by Brent Uberty.
Roughly 300 attendees from colleges in Illinois, Pennsylvania, New York and Oregon traveled to Salt Lake City and stayed at the Heritage Center to learn more about their shared skill.
Erika Church, a visual resource specialist at the Marriott Library, said the U offers bookmaking as a minor.
“I think it would be wonderful to have it as a major in the future,” Church said.
Church said someone should carry on bookmaking because it is a tradition. To her, it is a complex art that involves hand-binding, paper-making, and letter press-printing, all of which are disappearing now that more people are reading on devices such as tablets. The conference further advocated that the textile advantage to bookmaking is something electronics cannot replace.
The theme of the conference was “print, produce, publish.” There were a number of featured speakers, demonstrations, roundtable discussions, presentations and panels.
At the conference, artists were given the form of a small folded book to design and create on their own for an exhibit on the fourth floor. They were asked to make 33 in all, including one for the U to keep, and exchange them with another participants.
Laura Decker, a U student studying illustration and book arts, chose an Alec Baldwin theme.
“I think he’s handsome,” Decker said.
Her book illustrated her love for the “30 Rock” star in sharp lines and was sparsely colored with pink highlighter.
The aim of the CBAA conference was not only to get student artwork noticed, but also to help them connect with other scholars from around the country in their field of study.