Fold, pleat, bend, twist — there are so many ways to manipulate paper, Tyvek, and other materials to craft accordion books! Preparations for bookmaking include painting papers, making marks, carving stamps, and cutting stencils, using pattern and repetition around a central motif to hold your ideas together. In this workshop, make models of star, storage, flag, pocket, circle, pivoting panel and other accordion structures.
Create cover boards, fold papers, all with attention to structure, form, and ways of bringing accordions into your everyday life from journaling to travelogues and special artist books. Leave your week of making with a medley of ideas to add to future creations, sample book structures, and a final artist book.
Notes: Water-based materials only; no oil paint or water-based oil paint.
Melanie Mowinski likes paper and what goes ON paper. She likes the visceral and paper becomes a vessel on which she prints, collages, constructs, and more. She draws inspiration from the landscape of her Berkshire Hills home and residencies/travels to places like Iceland, Morocco, Tasmania, Venice, and most recently, from along the Camino de Santiago in Spain.
Mowinski embraces measurement and precision in the letterpress process as well as going rogue and making crazy lock-ups with super powerful magnets. She approaches book making in the same way—balancing hyper control & very specific rules with experimental investigations. She gravitates towards creating one-of-a-kind artist books housed in unusual and traditional enclosures.
Her letterpress prints and artist books are in numerous collections, including the Tate Modern, Oberlin College, and the Clark Art Institute. She’s taught workshops at Wells Book Arts Center, Williams College, and other art centers around the world. She holds master degrees from Yale University and The University of the Arts. Mowinski is a Professor of Art at the Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts (MCLA) in North Adams, MA and is the founder and director of PRESS: Letterpress as a Public Art Project and the author of Collage Your Life, Storey Publishing, 2022. Melanie Mowinski
