About This Exhibit
About the event
James Madison University Special Collections is honored to welcome acclaimed book artist, teacher, curator, and owner of Popular Kinetics Press, Carol Barton. Barton was JMU’s first ever Dorothy Liskey Wampler Distinguished Art Professorship visiting scholar and she will return to campus on Wednesday, March 22 to present History of Pop-Up and Movable Books.
The development of movable page formats began with early Renaissance science texts that employed volvelles and lift-up flap mechanisms. Barton will discuss and provide examples of movable illustrations from astronomical, navigational, mathematical and medical books. The presentation will also include a discussion of childrens’ pop-up books from the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, along with examples of current commercial and artist-made dimensional books. The lecture includes discussions of die-cutting and hand-assembly processes used in the modern manufacture of pop-up books.
Event will be held in Duke Hall Gallery Court on Wednesday, March 22, 2017, from 5-7 p.m.. Refreshments will be served.
For more information, click here.
About Carol Barton
Ms. Barton is a teacher, book artist, and curator who runs Popular Kinetics Press and has published numerous artist book editions since her first book, Beyond the Page, was printed in 1981. Her work is exhibited internationally and is in numerous collections, including The Smithsonian Institution, Library of Congress, Museum of Modern Art, The Getty Museum, and the Victoria and Albert Museum in London.
Carol has organized both local and national shows of artists' books, including the Books & Bookends national traveling exhibition and the Smithsonian Institution's Science and the Artist's Book exhibit. As a member of the faculty at The University of the Arts in Philadelphia and of the Corcoran College of Art + Designin Washington, DC, Carol teaches classes in paper engineering and book structures. She also lectures and teaches classes across the United States for all age levels.
Carol was awarded the Bogliasco Fellowship for a residency in Italy in the fall of 2000, during which time she wrote and designed her book Five Luminous Towers. Most recently she was awarded a residency by the Sacatar Foundation in Brazil. Her latest books, The Pocket Paper Engineer series of how-to workbooks on pop-up design and construction, are now available through Popular Kinetics Press.
Listen to podcasts by Carol Barton:
To hear Carol's interview for "Book Arts and Poets" with Steve Miller, click here
To hear Carol's interview with Diane Gilleland of Craft Pod, click here
For more information, click here.
This exhibit was created in March 2016 by MALA (Madison Academic Library Associates) graduate assistants Liana Bayne, MA '17, and Caroline Hamby, MA and Ed.S '17, in collaboration with Grace Barth, head of Digital Collections, JMU Libraries.