February Events at Bridwell Library:
Pulitzers, Poets, & Printing Arts
Former US Poet Laureate, Pulitzer Winners, & Major Artists Come to Bridwell in February
Bridwell Library will be hosting a wide range of artistic and literary talents from around the globe, with some internationally acclaimed writers and artists, including Sam Winston, Haein Song, Rick Myers, Viet Thanh Nguyen, and Natasha Trethewey.
Experiences Embodied & Remembered: Contemporary Artists Engaging Contemporary Concerns
Monday, February 13 from 5:30–7:30PM, join us at Bridwell Library’s Elizabeth Perkins Prothro Galleries for an Exhibition Opening & Reception. The exhibition opening will feature gallery talks by artists Sam Winston, Haein Song, Rick Myers, and Ifeanyi Anene. Free and open to the public.
Save the Date
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Workshop with Artist Sam Winston
Join us in Bridwell Library’s 2nd Floor Conference Room (207) for a hands-on workshop with artist Sam Winston on Monday, Feb 13, 10:30AM–12:00PM. Space is limited to 15 people. RSVP to attend.
RSVP
Join us on Monday morning with artist Sam Winston, who uses drawing, typography and artist books to explore embodied creative practice. For millennia, artists have moved questions out of their heads and into their hands. Putting pen to page invites the hand (and body) into the thinking process, letting intuition in. In this workshop Winston will explore new ways of thinking about and engaging with language as well as introducing us to some of his own creative strategies. No prior artistic experience necessary, these workshops aim to be relaxed and playful.
Operating at the intersection of visual culture and literature he has exhibited his work in museums and galleries around the world. Tate Britain, the British Library, the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C and J. Paul Getty Museum, among others, hold his artist’s books in their permanent collections. Projects involving drawings, and installations have taken place at institutes such as The Victoria and Albert Museum, the Barbican Centre, and The Whitechapel Gallery. He is the co-author, with Oliver Jeffers, of the New York Times bestselling book A Child of Books.
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Workshop with Artist Rick Myers
Join us in Bridwell Library’s 2nd Floor Conference Room (207) for a hands-on workshop with artist Rick Myers on Monday, Feb 13, 2:00–3:30PM. Space is limited to 15 people. RSVP to attend.
RSVP
On Monday afternoon join Rick for an informal conceptual chronology and conversation, involving ephemeral relics in the form of bitten paper, a photocopier art heist, a hundred year held breath, ice skating based on eye movements, dissipating words from remnants of The Parthenon, an absurdly reduced velocity projectile, a submerged silent sound work, and numerous drawings in which one hand interrupts the other. Feel free to come and listen or to get involved in questioning what may be constructed through bridging disparate thresholds.
Rick Myers is a Manchester-born artist living in Easthampton Massachusetts. Rooted in a process-driven investigation that encompasses indexical materials, etymology, text and image sequencing, Myers utilizes drawing, writing, photography, performance and design. Through this interdisciplinary practice, enquiries into the systematization of movement and the output of residual documents takes various forms, such as publications, installation, video and sound. The Getty Research Institute, Harvard University, The Library of Congress, MIT, MoMA, Stanford University, Tate Britain, Yale University, and other institutions hold his artist books and archive projects in permanent collections.
Recent publications include: Memory Is Current (Open Mouth Records, Philadelphia), Indices (Cejero, Copenhagen), A Bullet for Buñuel (Primary Information, New York), AbyssssybA (Nieves Books, Zurich). Solo exhibitions include: The National Poetry Library and The Courtauld Institute Library, London; Printed Matter, New York; White Columns, New York. Group exhibitions include: The Onassis Cultural Centre, Athens; Museum Meermanno, The Hague, organized by The National Library of the Netherlands.
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Workshop with Artist Haein Song
Join us in Bridwell Library’s 2nd Floor Conference Room (207) for a hands-on workshop with artist Haein Song on Tuesday, Feb 14, 2:00–3:30PM. Space is limited to 15 people. RSVP to attend.
RSVP
Please come along to a creative session with Haein Song to see her latest artist’s books, Light / Folds and Pain Memory, and get an insight in the process of making—from the idea to printmaking, letterpress printing, bookbinding and box making. She will also discuss current themes around memory in the body, relationships of time and light, and drawing from bodily experience.
You will also be invited to explore mark making in a playful way—drawing the bodily sensation using the body as an anchor. Then the sheet will be turned into a small folded booklet and finished by sewing it with the simple cover. No previous experience is necessary and suitable for all skill sets.
Haein Song is a fellow of Designer Bookbinders and an artist working primarily with books as her medium. She uses traditional bookbinding techniques to create unique or limited edition books, while employing a variety of printmaking methods. With a strong interest in the physicality of making and understanding the process of making, she explores qualities of transience, fragility, intangibility and absurdity in both the concept and aesthetic of her work.
Her artist’s books and fine bindings are held in public collections including British Library, Bodleian Libraries, Wellcome Collection, Library of Congress, Stanford University, Getty Research Institute, Yale University, Harvard University and Morgan Library among others. Her artist’s book was a semi-finalist at the Minnesota Center for Book Arts Artists’ Book Prize in 2020 and her find binding has been awarded one of the 25 Silver prizes at the Designer Bookbinders International Bookbinding Prize in 2022.
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Lecture with Featured Artists: Sam Winston, Haein Song, & Rick Myers
Join us for a lecture with our featured artists on Tuesday, February 14 at Prothro’s Great Hall from 5:30–7:30PM.
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Lecture & Reception with Featured Artist: Pulitzer Prize Winner & US Poet Laureate, Natasha Trethewey
Monday, February 20 at Bridwell Library from 6:00–7:30PM
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Natasha Trethewey won the 2007 Pulitzer Prize for her collection, Native Guard, and served two terms as Poet Laureate of the United States. The author of five poetry collections and two nonfiction books, she is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
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Lecture, Book Signing, & Reception with Featured Artists: Pulitzer Prize Winner & US Poet Laureate, Natasha Trethewey & Viet Thanh Nguyen
Tuesday, February 21 at McCord Auditorium, Dallas Hall from 6:00–7:00PM
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Please join the SMU community for a remarkable event of our two distinguished guests Natasha Trethewey and Viet Thanh Nguyen in conversation in Dallas Hall. The event is open to the public.
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Lecture & Reception with Featured Artist: Pulitzer Prize Winner Viet Thanh Nguyen
Wednesday, February 22 at Bridwell Library from 11:30AM–1:00PM
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Viet Thanh Nguyen’s novel The Sympathizer won the 2016 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. He has published two novels, a short story collection, and two nonfiction books, including Nothing Ever Dies: Vietnam and the Memory of War, which was a finalist for the National Book Award in nonfiction and the National Book Critics Circle Award in General Nonfiction.
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ATTENTION STUDENTS!
Ecological Sustainability & the Book Student Essay Contest
A final component of the History and Future of Print Program is to engage students through a regular essay contest to be submitted for consideration at Bridwell Library. The competition is called the Ecological Sustainability and the Book Student Essay Contest and asks students to consider the following questions: What are constructive ways to think about both the history and future of the book (physical or otherwise) in relationship to the global environment and what goals should we set that will make us better stewards of that future world? As younger generations will be impacted by environmental and other changes in the future, engaging new voices on these topics will be beneficial and helpful. The essay contest is open to SMU students and should be no more than 1,000 words (typed). Submit the essay to Anthony Elia (aelia@smu.edu) by Thursday, February 23, 2023. The essays will be reviewed by Bridwell Staff and winning entries will be published in the Winter 2023 Bridwell Quarterly.