There are some great opportunities to connect with the book arts community online these days.
There are several resources for video presentations by book artists:
- The Guild of BookWorkers has even more videos of past conference presentations. These are usually fee-based, but are now free until April 17. Just use the code ‘GBW4FREE’ at checkout. The default presentation is chronological, oldest to newest, but if you click on ‘Date” you can reverse that. Begin here: https://guildofbookworkers.org/content/gbw-videos-free-1-month. So far I’ve seen Timothy Ely’s 2015 presentation on the drumleaf binding, and Shawn Sheehy’s 2018 presentation on building pop-ups.
- Bainbridge Island Museum of Art has video archives of many, many presentations by book artists. https://www.biartmuseum.org/open-book-tours-video-library/
Julie Wildman is offering a free mini calligraphy lesson on Facebook at 11 AM CDT each weekday. https://www.wildmandesigns.com/
And finally, take a virtually tour of a museum here: https://artsandculture.google.com/partner. Some funkier collections include:
- Chester Beatty’s A-Z
- A collection of lettering
- A collection of Polish theater posters with some cool lettering
- A collection of images on the early printed book
You’ll find more there too, from heiroglyphics to graffiti.