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Book artist hosts papermaking workshop

Feb. 19, 2009

KALAMAZOO-The general public is invited to attend a papermaking demonstration and tour Wednesday, Feb. 25, in Kalamazoo.

The Western Michigan University Friends of University Libraries has scheduled the event for 5:15 to 7 p.m. in the Kalamazoo Book Arts Center, Suite 103A of the Park Trades Center. The $5 per-person cost to attend includes a papermaking sample to take home and light refreshments.

The demonstration will be presented by nationally recognized book artist Jeff Abshear, director of the Book Arts Center. The center, located at 326 W. Kalamazoo Ave., offers classes in book printing and binding, printmaking, hand papermaking, and creative writing. It is a nonprofit organization established by a group of artists and writers who have joined together to create a workshop and learning center to further book design and its related arts.

Abshear was a 2007 Fulbright Research Scholar to Venice, Italy, where he studied the history of Italian book printing, binding and papermaking. He worked in the printmaking facility at the Accademia di Belle Arti in Venice, and at Tipoteca Italiana Fondazione, a letterpress studio and museum in the village of Cornuda, north of Treviso.

A WMU alumnus, Abshear is an instructor of book arts and printmaking in the University's Frostic School of Art. He also teaches in the summer program at Michigan's Interlochen Center for the Arts, and at the Scuola Didactica di Thiesi in Sardinia, Italy.

Those attending the demonstration and tour should enter the Park Trades Center building through the Kalamazoo Avenue entrance, under the Park Trades Center sign. Free parking is available after 5 p.m. weekdays in the tenant lot on the Church Street side of the building as well as at metered spaces on Kalamazoo Avenue.

Visit wmich.edu/library/friends for more information about the event. Go to kalbookarts.org to learn more about the Kalamazoo Book Arts Center.

Media contact: Jeanne Baron, (269) 387-8400, jeanne.baron@wmich.edu

WMU News
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