The London Art Book Fair 2015

Battenburg Press will be exhibiting at this years' London Art Book Fair this Thursday 10th September - Sunday 13th September at Whitechapel Gallery, as part of the MCollective stand. We will be launching brand new works on paper including 'Nineteen Fuji Views' hot off the press. 

TEDx Fukuoka Women | Using Artists' Books to Connect People | Lucy May Schofield



On May 30th 2015 BABL was introduced to a Japanese audience at the TEDx Fukuoka Women event. It is now available to view online at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pr57T0RaSjc
‘The BABL project is a public intervention art work, combining a long established interest in the act of reading, emotional fluency, empathy and art as a therapeutic device. 
Lucy May Schofield is an artist and curator of the ‘Bibliotherapy Artist’s Book Library (BABL)’. BABL is a mobile touring library, home to around 200 artists’ publications, offering a unique reading experience to visitors through a combination of mindfulness and bespoke book prescriptions. Her practice focuses on artists’ books, as vessels to communicate. She has initiated projects to encourage access and exposure to engaging art works since 2002.’

Extra Course in Japanese Bookbinding and Box making announced



*Due to oversubscription a New Course has been added to the Summer Schedule at Hot Bed Press Printmakers ! Please contact them for enquiries at http://www.hotbedpress.org/contact-us/ 

*JAPANESE BOOKBINDING & BOX MAKING 

Weekend Course
Starting: Saturday 12th September 2015
Ending: Sunday 13th September 2015
From: 11:00 am to 5:00 pm
Tutor: Lucy May Schofield
Experience a unique weekend workshop in Japanese book binding and box making. Learn the skills to make 4 different Fukuro Toji binding styles, (four hole, noble, tortoise shell and hemp leaf) housed within a Hako Chitsu fold-down Box. Using authentic Japanese printed papers, washi, and vintage kimono fabrics sourced from Japan, this course will give you the opportunity to create a selection of the strongest, most elegant and practical bindings for printmakers and artists’ working with the book form.

Summer time WORKSHOPS & TALKS in the UK at Hot Bed Press.


 

JAPANESE BOOKBINDING & BOX MAKING

Weekend Course
Starting: Saturday 15th August 2015
Ending: Sunday 16th August 2015
From: 11:00 am to 5:00 pm
Tutor: Lucy May Schofield
About the course: 
Experience a unique weekend workshop in Japanese book binding and box making. Learn the skills to make 4 different Fukuro Toji binding styles, (four hole, noble, tortoise shell and hemp leaf) housed within a Hako Chitsu fold-down Box. Using authentic Japanese printed papers, washi, and vintage kimono fabrics sourced from Japan, this course will give you the opportunity to create a selection of the strongest, most elegant and practical bindings for printmakers and artists’ working with the book form.
Cost: £130.00 / £110.00 members
Maximum of 9 people - For enquiries and bookings visit the Hot Bed Press site here.


JAPANESE WATER-BASED WOODBLOCK PRINTING (MOKUHANGA)

Weekend Course
Starting: Saturday 5th September 2015
Ending: Sunday 6th September 2015
From: 11:00 am to 5:00 pm
Tutor: Lucy May Schofield
Mokuhanga is perfect for artists interested in a non-toxic, table-top, meditative printmaking technique. Learn the basic skills to create a key block and colour separation print, in the tradition of Ukiyo-e, using Japanese tools and materials. With countless possibilities, and minimum equipment (only a baren, no press required!), you will be sure to fall in love with both the process and results of this accessible printmaking method.
Lucy May Schofield has been working in Japan for the past 2 years, taking part in the artist-in-residence program at ‘MI-LAB’ (Mokuhanga Innovation Laboratory) and learning about Japanese hand paper making at ‘Awagami Factory’. We are really pleased to have Lucy back with us on a flying visit. Lucy has taught for Hot Bed Press for 8 years and is an internationally renowned book artist with work in many collections. She also works with Sylvie Waltering, (who runs our year-long book arts course), as the other half of 'Battenberg Press'.
Cost: £130.00 / £110.00 members
Maximum of 9 people - For enquiries and bookings visit the Hot Bed Press site here.


JAPANESE PAPER MAKING & PRINTMAKING

1 Evening Course (ARTIST'S TALK)
Starting: Wednesday 9th September 2015
Ending: Wednesday 9th September 2015
From: 7:00 pm to 8:30 pm
Tutor: Lucy May Schofield
Returning to the UK for the Summer, after spending two years in Japan, Lucy May Schofield will give a talk about her recent residency at ‘MI-LAB’ (Mokuhanga Innovation Laboratory) and learning hand paper making at ‘Awagami Factory’. Drawing on the important cultural relationship between paper making and printmaking, she will introduce and show samples of both washi (handmade paper) and mokuhanga (Japanese woodblock prints). Lucy will share her knowledge, ideas and inspirations from Japan, with a focus on how to adapt these traditional materials and techniques into a contemporary art practice.
Note Prices are £5 Advance and £10 on the door irrespective of membership status.
Cost: £10.00 / £5.00 members
Maximum of 40 people - For enquiries and bookings visit the Hot Bed Press site here. 

TEDxFUKUOKA WOMEN 'Momentum' Event






TEDxFukuoka 
I am delighted to have asked to present at this years' 'TEDxFukuoka Women' Event on Saturday May 30th. I will be talking about the 'Bibliotherapy Artist's Book Library' project joined by two inspiring speakers whose talks will be based on the event theme 'Momemtum'. 

 TEDxFukuokaWomen “Momentum”
Fukuoka, Japan – May 1, 2015
TEDxFukuoka (Joe Okubo, Organizer) will host a public TEDxFukuokaWomen event entitled “Momentum” on Saturday, May 30th, 14:00-19:30, at Momochi Palace (Sawara-ku, Fukuoka).
TEDxFukuokaWomen is one of the 2015 TEDxWomen events being held in Japan. The event will be complemented by 3 exceptional speakers, including Reiko Nakamura, Managing Director of Schawk & Anthem Japan.
This year’s TEDxWomen theme is “Momentum”. In the words of the organizers, “We’ll explore the bold ideas that create momentum in how we think, live and work.”

TEDxWomen session:Session One & Two: 14:00 ~ 17:30 (Open 13:00)
Includes an on-demand screening from Monterey, CA, and three presentations from our local speakers. 
The speakers are as follows:
Izumi Haraga, Nature Art Educator
Reiko Nakamura, Managing Director of Schawk & Anthem Japan
Lucy May Schofield, Artist/Curator, The Bibliotherapy Artist’s Book Library (BABL)
Reception: 18:00 ~ 19:30
Application for tickets: http://peatix.com/event/78911/
More Details can be found at:
http://tedxfukuoka.com/en/

Minnesota Center for Book Arts


I'm thrilled to have been selected to show 'All the News that's fit to Print (Brotherly Love)' at the Minnesota Center for Books Arts's forthcoming exhibition 'Reader's Art: Concealed, Confined and Collected from May 8th until July 26th 2015. The exhibition forms part of the Bookarts Biennale held at MCBA this Summer. The twin box works will be shown alongside 40 selected artists' works focusing on the book as container.

Letterlocking Devices Film




Massachusetts Institute of Technology Acquisition - USA.  
Back in May 2014, I was thrilled that a copy of 'Letters of Triangles' (the boxed work and the letterpress printed letter) became part of the Special Collections at MIT, USA. - 2014.
MIT researcher Jana Dambrogio made a series of films about letter locking which you can view here:

Typewriter Art : A Modern Anthology





The wonderful artist, designer and typewriter aficionado Barrie Tullet recently had his Typewriter Art book published by Lawrence King. He purchased a copy of my edition 'A Fair Place to Live' during Edinburgh Fruitmarket Gallery's 'BookMarket' event. He was kind enough to feature the work in his Anthology.

 A little bit about the book
'The first typewriter artist to find fame was Flora F. F. Stacey, with her butterfly drawing of 1898; but since the very beginning of the typewriter’s existence, artists, designers, poets, and writers have used this rigorous medium to produce an astounding range of creative work.

This beautiful book brings together some of the best examples by typewriter artists around the world. As well as key historical work from the Bauhaus, H. N. Werkman, and the concrete poets, there is art by contemporary practitioners, both typewriter artists who use the keyboard as a "palette" to create artworks, and artists/typographers using the form as a compositional device. The book will appeal to graphic designers, typographers, artists, and illustrators, and anyone fascinated by predigital technology.
And about the lovely author
Barrie Tullett is Senior Lecturer in Graphic Design at the Lincoln School of Art and Design, and cofounder of The Caseroom Press, an independent publisher of artists' books based in Lincoln and Edinburgh. As a freelance graphic designer, his clients have included Canongate Books, Princeton University Press and Penguin Books, amongst others.

Contemplating Obsession





‘ALL THE NEWS THAT’S FIT TO PRINT’
75 years ago Homer Collyer was found dead in an armchair in the 5th Avenue Brownstone mansion he shared with his brother Langley. The NYPD emptied the house of 130 tons of refuse including 1 horse’s jawbone, 25 thousand books, 14 pianos, 5 dressmaker’s dummies, several guns and 15 year’s worth of daily newspapers. 19 days later they discovered Langley’s body less than 10 feet from where his brother had died, suffocated under the weight of his collapsed hoardings.
In an ode to brotherly love and the Collyers’ obsessive compulsive hoarding, I created this ghost edition of the New York Times distills 15 years of minor news stories taken from the NYTimes archive between 1933-1947. Re-printed and re-published for the benefit of the late blind Homer Collyer as a comment on the futility and sadness of saving everything.
Letterpress printed broadsheet, white ink hand printed on 50gsm newsprint, 597mm x 374mm, edition of 5 2012.  

 In addition to the broadsheet I created twin mausoleums housing interpretive personal collections reflecting some of the objects discovered in the Collyer home.

I gather and keep my own hair in jam jars. I collected thimbles as a child and was consequently teased. I hold onto a defunct Adana printing press, whose instruction manual is useless. I own a dead mans collection of ambiguous printing plates. I have rooms worth of miniature furniture yet no dolls house to house them in. 

Specimen boxes contain Sunograph prints, Letterpress prints, inkjet digital prints, and various objects. The coffins are not to be separated, and only exhibited as a pair, re-visited in 2014.

Souvenirs of Vulnerability *special edition










           
A collection of object portraits that marked moments of vulnerability in relationships. Each page is a Riso-print translation of the original watercolour paintings of the souvenirs kept post exposed vulnerability. Each object a memento of a shift in feeling. The pages are french folded, perforated and sewn using a variation on a Japanese Stab binding. Each page must be separated by the viewer in order to expose the artwork souvenir. Each book is housed in a bespoke slip case, covered in teal blue or candy pink Colorado book cloth, with a foil debossed yellow banana on the cover. 

 Two colour Risograph printed in soya based ink (Gold & Orange/Flouoro Pink) on Zerkall 145gsm paper, soft-back cover Riso-printed on handmade paper with reduced stab stitch in silk embroidery thread, handmade slip case with exposed foredge. Edition of 8, teal or pink slip cases available 130 x 190 mm, 2013, £38. Available Here for Worldwide shipping and

  Here in the UK

New York I Love You


. ..but you're bringing me down 








 New York I Love You, but you're bringing me down.
A recent book edition created as an ode to the Big Apple and my three months spent there in the winter of 2011. A photographic and text response to the patterns of life in an unrelenting city. A struggle/survive, embrace/despise, resist/collide tone resonating from beginning to end. A love letter to the man, rather than Manhattan.

 One colour digitally printed, perfect bound with hand made cover in Atlantic Mist book cloth, heat foil debossed with silver Empire State. Edition of 10, 2013, £15 available here.

Letters of Triangles











письма-‐треугольники - Letters of triangles There was a time in which soldiers, having a prolonged absence from home, were thought to suffer and sometimes die of Nostalgia. This malaise later became known as homesickness. During WWII Russian soldiers sent triangular correspondence to their loved ones. In these письма-треугольники, the letter and envelope were one, allowing censors to access and omit any sensitive material without compromising the structure. The simple design meant the content and address never became separated and made the letters easily identifiable as priority mail to the postal service. 

Letterpress printed edition of 40, of which the first 10 letters are housed in a handmade clamshell box with handkerchief printed linings and special edition triangular letter. Published by Battenburg Press in April of 2013.

During the launch of the new work at the Arnolfini Gallery as part of BABE (Bristol Artists Book Event) the limited edition clamshell box of  'Letters of Triangles' was kindly purchased by Special Collections at Winchester School of Art Library, The Center for Fine Print Research in Bristol and Rare Book dealers Reed Contemporary. The TATE Library also purchased a copy of the edition of 40.

A new edition - Roadkill II









A  new edition. Roadkill II (victims of the modern world).
I have been quietly painting forlorn creatures for the past few months. There are three that made it into books, a frog, a squirrel, a pigeon. Each are inkjet prints on Somerset Satin paper, bound in grey board with silver foil blocking. They will soon be living outside of my studio and residing in Paper Gallery. The Center for Fine Print Research in Bristol have given each one a home too, thank you Sarah B.

*I am in love with my new peaceful space overlooking blissful Autumnal trees which continue to turn, shed and delight each day I put brush to paper. 

Oh it's my 300th post today! so thanks for tuning in.