Classes
Classes
The Columbia Center for Book
and Paper Arts offers classes to the community at large. These classes
are designed for those who wish to study Book Arts in a non-degree seeking
program. No experience is necessary, however, some classes may have
prerequisites. Our community class instructors are working professionals
in various book arts related fields and come from all over the country.
The classes are offered three semesters a year: fall, spring and summer.
All community classes are held at the Columbia College Chicago Center
for Book and Paper Arts, 1104 South Wabash, 2nd floor, Chicago, IL 60605.
If you are taking classes here please note the following:
Papermaking:
If you are taking a papermaking class, bring waterproof shoes, galoshes or boots and expect to get wet.
Letterpress:
If you are taking letterpress, bring rubber gloves and an apron and prepare to get inky.
Bookbinding:
For bookbinding classes please bring your own scissors, bone folder, needles, rulers, and X-acto knife on the first day of class and expect to work.
Some classes do have supply lists, and these are either given out at the first class or sent to registered students with your registration confirmation. After your class, if you are unable to pick up your artwork, you may have the Center mail you your work for an $8.00 shipping and handling fee.
Columbia College Chicago
Center for Book and Paper Arts
1104 South Wabash Ave., 2nd floor
Chicago, Illinois, 60605-2328
p: 312-344-6630 f: 312-344-8082
www.bookandpaper.org
book&paper@colum.edu
Staff
Anita Garza Director of Community Programs
Brad Freeman Studio Coordinator
Gina Ordaz Administrative Assistant
April Sheridan Studio Technician
SUMMER CLASSES:
PRINTING & LETTERING:
LETTERPRESS I
April Sheridan
Tuesdays, June 3–July 29, 6–9
Unlike many obsolete technologies, letterpress hasn’t vanished. Letterpress has been seized upon by artists, and has been transformed into a 21st Century art-making medium. There’s a letterpress resurrection going on, and you can be part of it. In Letterpress I, you will learn type setting by hand, locking up, Vandercook press basics, ink modification; you will also learn about paper as a receptacle for printing.
Limit 10 / 9 sessions / $325.00
(Members $290.00) + $35.00 materials fee + $50.00 refundable distribution deposit. (If you are paying by check, please write a separate check for the distribution deposit. Thank you.)
THE EDITIONED PRINT
Stephen DeSantis and Kirstin Demer
Picture this...an 8”x10” handmade piece of paper designed, colored and stenciled by you, then adorned with the magic of letterpress printing! We will wade in the waters of the papermaking studio to experiment with pulp painting, stenciling, and watermarking. We will then take our handmade paper into the letterpress studio to lovingly kiss the paper’s surface with letterpress design. Every step of the way will be individually and uniquely created by you!
Section I
Saturdays, June 7–21, 9–5
Section II
Sundays, June 8–22, 9–5
Limit 6 / 3 sessions / $288.00
(Members $260.00) + $35.00 materials fee
WOODTYPE EPHEMERA INTENSIVE
Stacey Stern
Tuesday, July 22–July 25, 10–4
Do you think Hatch Show Print posters are sexy? Do you find yourself buying Hammerpress and YeeHaw cards for every occasion? Or perhaps you just have a fascination with woodtype? If you answered "yes" to any of those questions, stop everything and enroll in this Woodtype Ephemera class. Students will have the rare opportunity to work from some of the Center's prized and unique woodtype to create one of a kind prints, posters, cards and more that you'll want to share with all your friends. Unquestionably the best thing you'll do this summer!
Limit 10 / 4 sessions / $288.00
(Members $260.00) + $35.00 materials fee + $50.00 refundable distribution deposit. (If you are paying by check, please write a separate check for the distribution deposit.)
BIG PRINTS
Stephen DeSantis
Small prints of your photographs, text, and designs are nice, but BIG PRINTS ARE BETTER! In our state-of-the-art computer lab we’ll start by discussing digital camera and scanning resolution then, you will design a 30” x 40” poster using your own digital images, scanned film images, text, and/or graphics. We’ll make small test inkjet prints to experiment with the effects of various resolutions and paper stocks then, after you have revised and finalized your design, we’ll make a 30” x 40” inkjet print of your poster on our Epson 9800 large format printer! Want more than one? For an additional lab fee, you can make dozens! (due to the time needed to print so large and the need for prints to dry for 24 hours, final prints will be ready 3 days after the final class meeting).
Section I
Saturdays, August 16 & 23, 9-4
Section II
Sundays, August 17 & 24, 9–4
Limit 6 / 2 sessions / $144.00
(Members $130.00) + $65.00 materials fee
PAPERMAKING:
INTRODUCTION TO MARBLING
Loni Diep & Brandy LaChapelle
Do you love the complex beauty of a richly marbled endpage? The natural poetic curves of Japanese Suminagashi? Then you are ready to make your own marbled papers. You will leave this weekend workshop with all the basics on the magic of marbling, not to mention a small collection of your own experiments.
Saturday & Sunday, June 28 & 29, 10-2
Limit 10 / 2 sessions / $96.00
(Members $85.00) + $25.00 materials fee
BOOKBINDING:
Please note: Bookbinding courses present information in a sensible and gradually building sort of manner. If you will not be able to attend class regularly, please consider taking the course some other semester, when you will be better able to enjoy the steady flow of information into your brain.
HAND-MADE BOOK CLOTH
Jamie Thome
Commercial book cloth can be just dandy. But it can also be ugly, expensive, or just Not Quite the Thing. Hey—you can make your own! It’s not hideously difficult. In fact, it’s fun. Jamie Thome will show you how to turn any fabric on earth into book cloth by backing it with paper in the traditional manner. You need to know this.
Saturday, May 24, 10–4
Limit 10 / 1 session / $72.00
(Members $65.00) + $20.00 materials fee
TUNNEL BOOKS INTENSIVE
Andrea Dezsö
Multi-layered tunnel books enjoyed the peak of their popularity during the Victorian era. They are within the same family of books as carousel books and pop-ups. Tunnel books can be closed flat and when popped open they contain miniature layered worlds that viewers can peek into, as into dioramas. In this class each student will create a one-of-a-kind three dimensional tunnel book based on a four-layered model developed by Andrea Dezsö. Each layer can be elaborately worked up using paper cutouts, collage, paining or drawing. Techniques used to create the book include: Cutting with X-acto knives, folding, sewing, drawing, collage.
Thursday–Sunday, June 26–29, 10–4
Limit 10 / 4 sessions / $288.00
(Members $260.00) + $35.00 materials fee
BOOKBINDING I
Jamie Thome
There are an astounding number of books on this planet. So you might perhaps wonder why you would want to make more books? And, of course, the answer is that, uh...well, it's just an incredibly cool thing to do. These are special books, not the run of the mill supermarket type objects, but Books As They Were Meant To Be, with High Quality Materials and no MSG, books made by you personally, for your own devious ends. Bookbinding I will introduce you to the history, tools and techniques of hand bookbinding all in 8 quick sessions. You will learn about paper, cloth, boards, adhesives and methods of folding, sewing and gluing. You will construct a variety of book structures, beginning with a single sheet of paper and progressing to a multi-section hard cover blank book.
There will be no class on July 4th.
Tuesdays, June 3–July 22, 6-9
Limit 10 / 8 sessions / $288.00
(Members $260.00) + $40.00 materials fee
Intensive Monday-Friday, July 14–18, 10-4
Limit 10 / 5 sessions / $288.00
(Members $260.00) + $40.00 materials fee
BOOKBINDING II INTENSIVE
Sylvia Ramos Alotta
For those of you who have romped through Bookbinding I and are looking for new challenges to surmount, we offer the creatively titled Bookbinding II, in which you will learn rounding and backing in order to make—yes!—the Fabulous Round Backed Case Binding. As an added treat, you will learn hand-sewn endbands, both German and French styles. It's hard to pass yourself off as a bookbinder if you don't know how to make this binding, so enroll immediately. The pre-requisite for this class is Bookbinding I.
Intensive Monday-Friday, July 21-25, 10-4
Limit 10 / 5 sessions / $288.00
(Members $260.00) + $40.00 materials fee
DESIGNING THE PICTURE BOOK
Ken Gerleve
Remember those picture books you read as a child, like the Berenstein Bears, Dr. Seuss or Little Monster Books? This class will teach you how to create your own picture books, using your own content. This course will begin with basic tutorials in Adobe Photoshop, Illustrator and InDesign to turn your original artwork and text into your very own picture book. We will explore the basics of page layout for multi-page publications, prepping original artwork in Photoshop and Illustrator. We will digitally print the results and bind them into a book. Students will bring in their text and sketches of work they’d like to compose into a book on the first day of class. We’ll discuss the relative roles of image and text within each project, and how the two elements combine to tell a story. Students will then make final artwork and develop a final draft of the text that will be laid out into a 16 page picture book. Finally, we will bind the book in one of two binding styles.
Friday, June 6 (6:30-9:30)
and Saturdays, June 7, 14, 21 (9:00 - 5:00)
Limit 10 / 4 sessions / $288.00
(Members $260.00) + $25.00 materials fee
COMICS, ZINES, ARTISTS, & THE BOOK
Ken Gerleve
Have you ever walked into Quimby’s or Chicago Comics and wished that you could make your very own comic books or zines? Or do you have a fetish for small books with interesting structures? Now you can combine the two for twice the fun! This class will introduce students to the world of comics and zines, and after learning some of the traditional (and untraditional) methods of comics/zine creation and some basic binding structures, they will create a small edition to share with classmates.
Saturdays, July 12—26 9-5
Limit 10 / 3 sessions / $250.00
(Members $225.00) + $25.00 materials fee
Community Class Faculty & Center Staff
Sylvia Ramos Alotta received her MFA from Columbia’s Interdisciplinary Book and Paper Arts program. Before coming to Columbia, she was as an Automotive Designer for General Motors and proprietor of Design Alotta Inc. Currently, Sylvia is the sole proprietress of the Sharpest Pencil Bindery and Letterpress Shop.
Kirstin Demer has worked as the Staff Papermaker at the Women's Studio Workshop in addition to teaching for their Summer Arts Institute Program. She was awarded three studio assistantships in papermaking and book arts at Penland School of Crafts. She is a graduate of Columbia's Interdisciplinary Book and Paper Arts Program.
Stephen DeSantis is a photographer who received his BFA in Communication Design from Parson's School of Design in NY, concentrating in Photography. After 23 years as a successful commercial photographer, studio manager and producer, he went back t school to receive his MFA in Interdisciplinary Book and PAer Arts in 2008.
Loni Diep is a paper-maker, book artist and sculpture artist from Florida. Loni received her BFA in Graphic Design from the Ringling School of Art and Design. She is a MFA graduate of the Interdisciplinary Book and Paper Arts program at Columbia College Chicago.
William Drendel is a Chicago book artist and designer. He is the Gallery Coordinator of the Center and is very active in the national book arts community; he is the Co-Director of Book and Paper Intensive. His work, while based on traditional forms and techniques, tends to be very non-traditional. His work is in international collections.
Brad Freeman is a photographer, printer, and book artist whose work is collected internationally. He founded JAB the Journal of Artists' Books in 1994 in an attempt to raise the level of critical inquiry into artists' books. He has an MFA in Book Arts/Printmaking from the University of the Arts in Philadelphia.
Anita Garza is the Director of Community Programs for the Center. Her BA in art and creative non-fiction is from Columbia College Chicago. She graduated with an MFA in Interdisciplinary Book and Paper Arts in 2003. Her extra-curricular activities include the band Itchy Pet and the literary website burningword.com.
Ken Gerleve is a current MFA student in the Interdisciplinary Book and Paper Arts program at Columbia. His illustration and design work has appeared in several publications and he is currently writing and illustrating a serialized Gothic Mystery novel. His other interests include children’s literature, comics, graphic novels, felt puppets and paper cut illustrations.
Yukie Kobayashi is an artist who makes handmade paper for use in her sculptures. She has solo exhibitions in Washington, DC and Philadelphia and has an M.F.A in Sculpture from the Pennsylvania Academy of Art.
Brandy LaChapelle got her BFA from the Minneapolis College of Art and Design. She is a printmaker, paper-maker and all-around experimenter. She is currently working on her MFA in the Interdisciplinary Book and Paper Arts program at Columbia College Chicago
Gina Ordaz received her BA in Liberal Arts from Columbia College Chicago. In addition, Gina’s pleasant demeanor will greet you as you walk into the Center’s Office. Not only is she the Administrative Assistant here at the Center, but she also manages the Unstore. One of Gina’s greatest life contributions is her son, Ezra.
April Sheridan graduated with an MFA in Interdisciplinary Book and Paper Arts in 2005. She is the Broadside Coordinator for the Poetry Program in the English Department at Columbia College Chicago and makes poems pretty for Brass Door Press.
Stacey Stern received her BFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and has been teaching at the center since 1999. In her spare time she makes book art, wears pink wigs and is the sole proprietress of Steracle Press www.steracle.com.
Jamie Thome received her MFA in Book and Paper Arts at Columbia in 2000. She spent a year in the mentorship program for emerging women artists at Artemisia Gallery in Chicago. Her work has been shown around the country and overseas in various forms and in juried shows. Along with her husband, a potter, and two other BPA alums, she works out of Vespine Studios in Pilsen.