Mobile Devices: Conveying Movement in Text, Image, and Material

March 4 – June 3, 2014

This exhibition explores the theme of mobility—physical, mental, poetic, social, economic, and geographic—within a collection of artists’ books at the Kohler Art Library.  Doing so provides the opportunity to showcase the range of cultural and artistic issues addressed by contemporary book arts.  Some of these issues include immigration, evolution, travel, money, the status of women, cultural exchange, nature and science, and fantasy and the imagination.

Within these books, movement is conveyed through many prisms: the passing of time, distance travelled, exploration, experimentation, sequencing and progression, repetition, fluidity, aspiration and spiritual growth, chance, and anonymity.  A number of the “mobile devices” unfold and expand by means of accordion folds.  With embedded movement and flexibility, the structures invite physical interaction with the viewer.

This exhibition was curated by sixteen graduate students enrolled in LIS: 839 (Art Librarianship) during spring 2014.  Each student selected and researched an artists’ book from the Kohler Art Library and wrote a caption label.  The students worked collaboratively to install the exhibition.

The curators are:  Oliver Bendorf, Lauren Gottlieb-Miller, Carolina Hernandez, Dustin Karls, Shauna Koszegi, Mary Kathryn Kwasnik, Ellen LeClere, Michele Loran, Mariza Morin, Sona Pastel-Daneshgar, Bryce Porter, Rebecca Robbennolt, Laura Rudquist, Susan Seefelt Lesieutre, Kaitlin Springmier, and Jamie Stanaway.

Special thanks to Dan Joe, GLS Graphic Designer, for his assistance with labels and signage.

Image:  Julie Chen and Barbara Tetenbaum.  Ode to a Grand Staircase (For Four Hands). Berkeley, CA: Flying Fish Press; Portland, OR: Triangular Press, 2001.