Graduates of ENG 444 Manifesto Book Binding are collaborating with faculty and print-making students from the art department to form a book-binders’ collaborative that will show and sell its work at the Downtown Muncie First Thursday Arts Walk on October 6.  Blank journals will retail for $5-60 at Gordy’s Fine Art and Framing.

English students who studied and practiced a variety of historical binding techniques in ENG 444 are contributing blank journals to the show, and art faculty David and Sarojini Johnson and their students will contribute printed books they have made using University presses.  “Artist’s books are hand-sewn and uniquely bound books,” explains Genny Gordy, gallery owner.  Many in the English Department community are familiar with our students’ work from the blank journals they sold on campus last year.  For the gallery show, members of the book-binders’ collaborative have used fine drawing and writing papers in their text blocks, larger book formats, and decorative clasps and hand-made papers for cover materials.

New alumna Laura Kuhlman, who is currently a graduate student at the University of Iowa; Karen Ruling, who is working in Fort Wayne; and Maddy Witek, who recently returned from summer travel in Ireland join current English education student-teacher Sarah Dalton and me in contributing to the show and sale.  The accompanying photos are of blank books made by English department members.

This is the first gallery show for the book-binders’ collaborative, and the only one scheduled in Muncie.  We have booked shows with galleries around central Indiana to realize our mission of making artist’s books accessible to more people.  We hope our first and best customers from the Department of English will support our “graduation” to this gallery show by coming by Gordy’s on October 6^th to say hello.  And hey, blank books make great gifts, especially for oneself.