Process & Collaboration: Designing Poetry Chapbooks in the Book Arts
Join us for an in-depth conversation led by three Book Artists with distinct practices, who will discuss their experiences designing and collaborating with poets on hand-produced limited edition chapbooks and other literary objects. CBA’s Programs Manager, Jenna Hamed will moderate this conversation with Aurora De Armendi, Erika Morillo, & Faride Mereb.
For nearly 50 years, Center for Book Arts has been supporting artists and book arts by presenting exhibitions, lectures, readings, and performances; providing opportunities for artists, writers, curators, and scholars through residencies. Their annual chapbook contest has been an elegant gateway for numerous emerging poets.
Aurora de Armendi is an interdisciplinary artist. She is currently an Assistant Professor of art at SUNY New Paltz. She studied at the Cooper Union School of Art, New York, NY(BFA, 2005) and The University of Iowa, Iowa City, IA (MFA, 2009). She was selected to be part of the program Artist in the Marketplace (AIM) at the Bronx Museum of Art during 2012-13 and she was awarded a full year residency from the Center for Book Arts, New York in 2013. In 2016, she completed artist residencies at Anderson Ranch Arts Center (Colorado) and Jamaica Flux (Queens), and was a finalist for the Cintas Foundation Fellowship showing her work at the MDCC Museum at the Freedom Tower in Miami. She was born in Havana, Cuba and currently lives in NYC.
Faride Mereb is a Venezuelan artist, award-winning book designer, teacher, researcher, and founder of publishing house Ediciones Letra Muerta. She currently lives in NYC with her husband, where she teaches and designs. Mereb is a visiting scholar at Columbia University exploring North and South Americas’ hybridity through its printing and book history. She has exhibited at CBA and is currently co-curating a show at the Washington Project for the Arts.
Born and raised in the Dominican Republic, Erika Morillo is a freelance artist and educator based in New York City. She studied clinical psychology and sociology, which influenced her to photograph as a way to understand her family dynamics and the social environment she inhabits. Her work focuses on the issues of family, the finding of identity, and exploring the photobook as art object. Her photographs have been published and exhibited nationally and internationally and her photobooks are in the collections at the Whitney Museum of American Art Library and The International Center of Photography Library. She is currently pursuing an MFA at Image Text Ithaca.
Jenna Hamed is an art worker, writer and photographer based in Queens. Hamed obtained a Bachelor’s Degree in Apparel, Textiles and Merchandising from Eastern Michigan University, and a Master’s Degree in Arts Politics from New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts. She is currently Programs Manager at the Center for Book Arts where she regularly collaborates with artists, poets, curators, and researchers on developing experimental creation and narration of the book as an art object. With a fascination for documentation and archiving methodology, Hamed uses poetics and photographic practices for extracting the mysticisms found in the everyday, and for capturing enigmatic contradictions to preserve the essence of transient occurrences. Her text- and image-based works can be found in several online and print publications, as well as in her e-zine publications, which she sends out to subscribers on a monthly basis.
City University of New York MFA Reading: Four CUNY alumni read from their chapbooks. Featuring Dudgrick Bevins (City College), Charles Theonia (Brooklyn College), Jiordan Castle (Hunter College) and Leila Ortiz (Queens College)
