We are excited to announce that UICB MFA candidates Ian Huebert and Amy Richard and UICB BLIS student John Fifield have been awarded Caxton Club Grants. The Caxton Club is an organization located in Chicago devoted to “the literary study and promotion of the arts pertaining to the production of books.” These grants of up to $2500 help sponsor graduate students in the Midwest for a range of book-related projects.
Ian Huebert will be working on a project titled "Beans.” It is an illustrated scroll that measures 4 inches wide and nearly 17 feet long. The linoleum block illustrations (around 48 of them) tell a story, loosely based on the Jack and the Beanstalk tale, about a wolf who is shammed into some magic beans, runs into a giant, a magic cigar box banjo, and a few other characters to boot. The scroll will be housed in a tin can, the same kind beans are packaged in at the supermarket, and the reader will need a can opener in order to get inside. The grant will help in acquiring canning equipment, linoleum blocks, and lots of Sakamoto paper.
Amy Richard will be using her Caxton Grant to fund her thesis work, "Drawing from the Book of Nature." The project includes the creation of a portfolio collection of silk screen pulp prints on traditional handmade Japanese-style paper. The collection will be accompanied by an installation of companion sculptures made with the same bast fibers. Both imagery and sculptures are inspired by close observation of an assembly of natural relics collected from woodland and coastal forays (seed pods, leaves, mollusk shells, egg casings). Richard's goal is to explore the hieroglyphic language to be deciphered from these forms while also using inherent luminosity of the paper as an important expressive element.
John Fifield will return to the library at the Convento de la Recoleta in Arequipa, Peru, for two and a half weeks in January to continue researching Latin American book interventions. Items of interest include binder's waste, local bindings, inquisitorial expurgations, marks of provenance, marginalia, bound-withs, and marcas de fuego (library book brands) in both European and Latin American books from the collection.
Congratulations Amy, Ian, and John!