The BA Fine Art Utah Trip was a two week international collaborative artists’ book project between Wirral Met BA Fine Art department and the Fine Art Department at Brigham Young University in Provo, Utah, USA. At the end of April ten of our students, accompanied by tutor Paul Bearman and myself (Michelle Rowley) flew to Salt Lake City to take part in this joint project.
This exciting collaboration began as a brief conversation between myself and BYU’s Painting Professor, Joseph Ostraff when we met at the ‘scissorspaperstone’ artists’ book fair in London in 2008, where we were both showing our artist’s books.
Over the past year we kept up a dialogue to work through the practicalities of setting up a collaborative relationship and to develop a project strategy for a shared book arts / printmaking master class which would result in an exhibition of the art works we would jointly produce. On our first day at BYU we introduced ourselves to their staff and students with some presentations on Merseyside’s culture and environment and another on our individual art practices. Over the first week we were treated to demonstrations on Lithography and Letterpress printing and I delivered a special Book Arts master class to the whole group of 35 participants.
We set off the very next day on a three day campout in the canyon lands of Southern Utah. Travelling through this desert region gave us the opportunity to gather visual research materials which informed our artists’ book ideas. Wewere totally knocked out by the landscapeswe visited and had a fantastic time and the group bonded together really well through all our challenges.
On our return to campus our books were produced in an intense four day period of franticmaking in time for the planned exhibition at BYU’s excellent art faculty gallery on the 7th May 2009. The opening night was a great success with lots of visitors and the show looked stunning. All the students, fromboth institutions, worked very hard on this project and we were given the most incredible support by BYU staff in order to make this such a
successful event. I would also like to add that WMC were instrumental in encouraging, and supporting,me to develop this relationship with Brigham Young University and this has now proved to be a firmand continuing link.
WMC will be reciprocating the exhibition of the ‘Mapping the West’ by hosting the show at theWilliamson Art Gallery in September of 2009.
By Michelle Rowley, Art Department.
For more details about the project see our blog:
http://www.a-n.co.uk/degrees_unedited/projects/single/523609
More of our books can also be seen on: www.movingfeast.co.uk
Email: michelle.rowley@wmc.ac.uk
