ICELAND ART — Blog — Brooke Holve

A rhythm of weather effects—light blinding rays offset by gray belting hail and rain. A spectacular and felt side show as my table was located on the aisle closest to the industrial sized windows of the Craneway Center in Richmond at the Codex International Book Fair.

I enjoyed every minute of this event. Where else can one experience a gathering of book artists from all over the world? Over 200 exhibitors from more than twenty-five countries shared their quality books along with engaging conversations on their creative processes.

The international focus this year was Codex Nordica and artists from Iceland, Norway, Sweden, Denmark and Finland were represented. Special to me as I have been traveling to Iceland for artist residencies since 2012. Last summer I taught Book Iceland at the Gullkistan Center for Creativity and met two of the artists as they presented the work of Airkir (www.aikir.wordpress.com), to the class. Eight from the group came to Codex. I invited them up to the NBLA shop in Sebastopol after Codex. They accepted. So, two days after the closing, we hosted what mushroomed into a delegation of ten artists: six from Iceland, three from Norway and one from Sweden. The whole afternoon was charmed. There was a lunch next door, then a showing of each other’s books, and finally sitting down with coffee and cake to talk about how we might collaborate or at least stay in touch. It was a wonderful ending to a week of non-stop conversation and contemplation on the medium of artist books.

The San Francisco Center for the Book is currently hosting the Nordic letterpress collaboration exhibition, Posted/Unposted. The exhibition opened before Codex and will run to April 29th.

I have been invited to present a talk during this exhibition on Book Iceland, a class I taught last summer at Gullkistan Center For Creativity in Laugarvatn to artists from the United States, England, Germany and Iceland. I will report back on my experiences there in the talk I have titled, Land & Texture: Exploring Iceland For Content in Artist Books. Inspired by the natural energies which shape Iceland’s landscape, the participating artists explored materials, tools, and processes, forming the content for their artist book projects.

The talk is scheduled for Tuesday, April 2, 6–8 pm at the San Francisco Center For The Book on 375 Rhode Island Street in
San Francisco, CA sfcb.org

Mark your calendars.

Ready to leave, now that I know that my boxes of supplies have arrived safely. I am returning to Iceland this week to teach the workshop, BOOK ICELAND at Gullkistan Center for Creativity in Laugarvatn. This will be my fourth trip to Iceland and my third visit to Gullkistan. I am excited to put my ideas in this form for others.

BOOK ICELAND  workshop materials have arrived. — BOOK ICELAND workshop materials have arrived.

More about BOOK ICELAND:

It's a rare visitor who is not touched by Iceland's natural energies and diverse landscape. A wild island of the north with massive glaciers exposed to wind and ocean currents, is located on two tectonic plates with a fault line running at an oblique angle from its north to southwest. Energies of wind, fire and water below and above its surface shape the landscape, leaving unique textures and colors not seen elsewhere on this earth: glacier ice fields and lagoons, rumbling volcanoes, waterfalls, vast lava fields--moss covered and raw, contorted basalt walls, geysers, thermal pools, deep gorges and fjords.

This land of extremes has also shaped its people and language. Steeped in a history of isolation and hardship, the Vikings who first settled this island in the late ninth century, recounted their stories in folktales, poems, oral histories and song. Two centuries later, those stories were captured in writing--leaving handwritten manuscripts that are treasured and valued today.

The Icelanders' love for both their land and the book has inspired this workshop. We'll explore Iceland's varied landscape; we will look at how the natural processes have shaped it and explore ways to express those energies through artistic experimentation. We will develop content for two books (from our field studies) and learn two book structures (drum leaf & coptic binding) to contain it.

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