Increasingly popular, some artists and book publishers are making “bootleg” versions of photo books and editions that have become rare (and thus hard to find or very expensive). Often these bootleg versions are made on a copy machine, with different paper than the original or perhaps even a different edit and binding. Assignment: Make a bootleg version of a book from Meyer Library that you think honors the original but is more in the style of an homage. Meaning: take inspiration from the original but make a version that you think is worthy of a re-issue and that takes some imaginative liberties with the original. While this may go beyond a strict “bootleg,” it should definitely go beyond a mere facsimile of the original. The CCA Libraries will acquire the bootlegs on view into the artist books collection.
Lange explores notions of comfort, safety, identity and home through textiles. For this exhibition, four large-scale fabric sculptures are suspended from the Simpson Library wall alongside an artist intervention with the Science Library. Shelters operate as wearables and have been utilized in performances by Lange in previous iterations of the work, one such performance will be hosted during the opening reception.
The CCA Libraries Exhibition Program presents a digital exhibition by Erik Scollon’s undergraduate course, Craft as Social Justice. Exhibiting students include Maha Almadhi, Kelsey Bowen, Faye Dennis, Laila Espinoza, Maya Gulassa, Christine Juon, Angela Seon, Rosa Novak, Tracy Ren, Tenzin Tsomo, and Mai Utsumiya. For their final project, the students of Craft as Social Justice created an online exhibition of objects that focus on the intersection of craft practices and a social justice issue of their choosing. The collected exhibitions seek to make visible the connections between skilled making and materiality to the lived experiences of the makers and users. The curators sought to tie the issues and the makers to the current political moment. Viewers are invited to view the student projects on display in the digital space of exhibition by powering on the iPad display and following the links and videos embedded on the Craft as Social Justice homepage. Digital exhibitions on view include Break the …
The CCA Fall 2016 Library Exhibition program presents the work of Prima Sakuntabhai (MFA '17) at the Meyer Library on Oakland's campus. The work on view combines image, text, and ephemera collected during the artist’s time at the SOMA SUMMER 2016 artist residency in Mexico City. Prima spent two months this past summer in residence at SOMA SUMMER in dialogue with a community of international artists and contemporary art practitioners from Mexico City. The conceptual foundations of architecture and ruin are critical to the narratives Prima constructs. Layering of image, text, and oration are fused in the artist's practice with auto-topographic storytelling, while simultaneously making visible the erasure of cultural histories in Mexico City through the construction of site. The re-framing of 70's vernacular architecture, by visualizing the stylistic appropriation of Mayan Aztec motifs by European Art Deco in (Site) Specificity II, reveals a transparency in cultural boundaries that are open and clo…
On November 2nd we celebrate Day of the Dead. A tradition originally practiced in Mexico, Day of the Dead is now recognized widely as an important holiday in the U.S. as well. In California especially, this ritual has become a bridge that brings together members of diverse communities in order to remember and honor our loved ones who have passed away. The altar will be up through Friday, November 14th, and we welcome your leaving of offerings, images, notes, mementos, etc. to commemorate your loved ones. Remembrances can be left at any time this week and are not restricted to the main build today. If including photographs/images, we recommend using photocopies rather than originals.
On July 25th, 1912 United States world chess champion (1909 – 1936), Frank James Marshall, sacrificed his Queen (Q to G3), beating out opponent, Stefan Levitsky, in what is considered one of the most brilliant twists of game fate in recorded chess history. This move, now canonized in chess terminology as a “swindle,” is the achievement of a win or a draw from a distinctly losing position. Shotgun Shells and Pinecones presented at the Meyer Oakland Library brings together the aesthetics of chance and gender. Curated vitrines offer a selection of books, photographs, and texts from the library archive in addition to found artifacts, images, and books from a family archive. Presented in conjunction with Angela Berry’s CCA MFA Thesis exhibition on view at the Perry Family Gallery until April 2nd, Shotgun Shells and Pinecones, is a playful counter-point to Berry’s thesis body of work Rough Weather Makes Good Timber, which looks at different processes of resilience in the ancient forest habitat of the Blue Ridge…
ode to waking up, super early and immediately pouring hot water through the coffee dripper into your mug, setting it aside to cool down for a split second but realize you don’t have enough time to enjoy it and read like hoped for, should’ve been out the door and on the way ten minutes ago but spent way too long choosing something you were comfortable and felt good wearing, willingly ignoring the time because you don’t want to go in the first place. out the door and that cup of coffee doesn’t cross your mind until well on your way - Woody De Othello
The Simpson Library presents Moby Dick, or, The White Whale, a display in conjunction with EMOJICON, a conference put on by Emoji Learn to make connections with the global emoji community and discuss the contemporary usages and implications of this popular form of visual communication. Fred Benenson’s Emoji Dick was created in collaboration with over eight hundred Amazon Mechanical Turk workers. Benenson worked with one Amazon Mechanical Turk to translate an estimated 10,000 sentences from Herman Melville’s iconic American novel. Another set of workers voted to decide on the most popular versions of every sentence in Emoji Dick. In total this book took 3,795,980 seconds to complete. Each worker was paid per translation (five cents) and for their vote (two cents). This project was crowd- sourced by Benenson using Kickstarter in 2009. In conjunction with Emoji Dick, the library presents alternative versions of Moby Dick.
Freedom, a Fable is an illustrated artist's book with text and pop-up silhouettes. At first glance it appears to be a nineteenth-century children's book, but it is decidedly not. It tells the story of a female slave whose life after emancipation veers far from her dreams of meritocracy, revealing that Freedom, a Fable is not just the title of the work but is also the lesson to be learned.
The CCA Library Exhibitions Program presents Advent of a Form, by CCA graduate student Carolina Magis Weinberg, which proposes a reconsideration of space in terms of its geometrical potential. In a play of scale, the two walls, floor, and ceiling of the library’s store front become the axis of a Euclidean space, making the X, Y, and Z dimensions visible. The image operates then as a map of itself. In this way, the temporal quality, elemental in the understanding of Euclidean space, will be considered literally as the form morphs throughout the number of days of the exhibit. Explained succinctly with homophones in French, the form will go from début to debout, from its origin to its standing position. Additionally, display vitrines extend this form into the space of the library. The project will be morphing and changing week after week, until it arrives at its final form on December 12th.