Galena Design Center and Dubuque Book Arts presents a weekend workshop.

April 28 & 29, 2012

"Travel Journals : Sketching & Hand-Made Books" Location: Galena, Illinois and Dubuque, Iowa

This two-day weekend workshop will be held over the weekend of April 28 & 29, 2012

Limited to six participants, $145 includes materials ($50 deposit will hold your place) 

Overnight lodging is available in numerous lovely small hotels and B&Bs in the Galena/Dubuque region.

Please see http://galena.org and http://www.traveldubuque.com/

 Come visit the beautiful Driftless region around Galena (NW Illinois) and Dubuque (NE Iowa) for a weekend workshop with Peter Fraterdeus and Alice McMahon. 

This workshop combines basic non-adhesive bookbinding techniques — leading up to making a simple four-signature journal with a folded paper cover — with taking our new sketch journals into the field to make sketches of the local built and natural environments in a journal format. 

Non-adhesive books are made without glue, and require no special equipment. Covers are made with folded and tabbed heavy paper, using principles discovered in 13th Century "limp vellum" bindings. Peter will show examples from his collection of antiquarian, contemporary and handmade books. 

No bookbinding experience required. Some familiarity with paper folding and drawing tools preferred, but not required. Drawing experience helpful but not required.

Travel Sketching Journals have a long history, long before the days of picture postcards or digital cameras. Today, they provide a record of a journey, and an opportunity to heighten our skills of observation. Travel sketches are both mnemonic and illustrative, whether quick or studied, they need not be more than a few lines and smudges, or may be as closely observed as a fine drawing. (Traveling not required, of course, the journal can be used for any kind of drawing or writing!)

PETER FRATERDEUS has taught letterpress printing, calligraphy, book structures and digital typography in a number of venues, both in the US and Europe, including the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, and Columbia College's Center for Book and Paper Art. He is the owner/proprietor of Slow Print in Dubuque, an award-winning 'high-touch' 21st Century letterpress printing studio. In the 1981, he received a National Endowment for the Arts apprenticeship grant to study calligraphy and letter carving with Ieuan Rees in Wales, and in 1986, received an NEA Design Projects grant for his first digital typeface, "Prospera". Peter is a self-professed paper junkie. http://slowprint.com 

ALICE MCMAHON is an internationally exhibited figurative artist, specializing in pastel portraits and charcoal magic realist drawings in large formats. Her work has been shown at the Saatchi Gallery in London and featured in American Artist magazine. She is currently represented by the 33 Contemporary Gallery in Chicago. Recent work includes a 30"x50" drawing on MDF board being shown by invitation at the 2011 Voices Art Gallery Exhibit in Dubuque's Historic Warehouse District. http://alicemcmahon.com

Please fill out our Community Survey as we hone our course descriptions!

Also please follow us on Twitter and Facebook (links to SlowPrint's pages where we'll post news about Dubuque Book Arts events)

Throughout the year:
Typography for Artists and Others  - Peter Fraterdeus and Kristine Jubeck (Weds evenings 7-9 once a month)
    Learn to arrange language and information based on typographic contrast, form, color and structural principles. Use common word processing and simple page layout programs and their stylesheets. For artists, administrators and anyone needing a better sense of how to use visual language to write grants, design logos, flyers, posters and signs, and even make better websites.

May-June Dates to be determined.
Non-Adhesive Bindings and Plein Aire Drawing: A weekend workshop (Saturday & Sunday 11-5) combining
    Making Books without Glue - Peter Fraterdeus
    Learn to make your own Journal or Sketchbook with a simple non-adhesive binding based on 13th Century book structures
    Drawing the River - Alice McMahon
    Take your new sketchbook out to the Mississippi bluffs for a day of drawing (picnic lunch)

Get out of the house with a brand new sketchbook!

Two-day workshop at Slow Print Letterpress Studio (Dubuque)

Non-Adhesive Bindings are modern adaptations of millennium-old techniques to transform loose sheets of paper into lovely, high-touch books with nothing but needle, thread and a sharp knife. No glues or adhesives needed!

We'll produce three book types, simple pamphlet style, single-sheet accordion, and  multiple-signature sewn onto a folded cover.

The first day is focused on exploring the many possible structures of the book; folding, tearing, cutting and sewing papers, and finally creating a finished sketchbook from large sheets of fine art drawing paper. The binding section is taught by Slow Print founder Peter Fraterdeus.

Our second day will be in the countryside along the beautiful bluffs of the Mississippi River near Dubuque, for a day of sketching with charcoal and pencil with your new sketchbooks! Alice McMahon, an internationally known painter and charcoal artist, will provide critique and pointers on technique.

June - July
Calligraphic Adventures with Peter Fraterdeus - (Two Saturdays 11-5)
    Beginners through advanced calligraphers welcome as we play with the tools that humans have created to write and draw letters. Inks, watercolors, brushes, quills, steel, felt and roller pens-everybody out of the toolbox! We'll work with different types of paper, and learn how to see letters in a whole new way. Get away from the computer and feel the scratch of a real quill on handmade paper!

August-September
Wood Type Wonderland  - Peter Fraterdeus and Kristine Jubeck - (Saturday & Sunday 11-5)
    Join Peter and Kristine for an adventure in Wood Type on the Vandercook 219 Cylinder press. Extremely limited enrollment, this class at Slow Print Letterpress will be offered to a maximum of four students at a time. We will learn to design in real time with Slow Print's collection of antique wood type, and investigate the graphical and linguistic power of these wonderful old letterforms. Get away from the computer and smell the ink!