Fave epigraph I've seen in a while: "Find the others." (In Dana's obsolete duplication tech guide.) As a callback to @eireannmor.bsky.social's recent art ("you are not alone" bsky.app/profile/eire...) now I know what to print as my additive overlay on your #BuildingBookLabs25 print swap screenprint:
#BuildingBookLabs25 there are some of your hands in this work
I’m only now having the bandwidth to post about #BuildingBookLabs25. It was an intense 2 days but lots of fun. Thanks to all the organisers, presenters & workshop teachers!
Spring semester is over, #BuildingBookLabs25 is in the books, the farmers’ market is open, & it’s 70s & sunny in Central Illinois, so @eviedc.bsky.social & I are turning the dial to full summer
Had a fantastic time at @skeuomorphpress.org 's #buildingbooklabs25! It was truly humbling to learn from master printmakers and digital humanities enthusiasts like @josefbeery.bsky.social, @mkirschenbaum.bsky.social and many others. I cannot wait to apply everything I have learned to my work!
After the busyness of this week, it feels a little insane that I start teaching our pilot 1-week BookLab Summer Intensive next week
But this does mean I get to test brilliant ideas from folks at #BuildingBookLabs25 immediately—our papermaking & hand press labs are going to be especially improved!
Screen shows a powerpoint slide that reads Making as Research
Split image, top half shows sewn letters on felt, bottom half shows a powerpoint slide with sewing instructions.
Wood letters in a printing chase with a printed sheet of paper next to them
Cat curled up on a blanket
Back home after an amazing time at #BuildingBookLabs25! Everyone there was so nice and inspiring, I am eager to apply what I've learned in my classroom and at work. But for now I'm resting and buried under cats who missed me. 😄
Something I’m thinking hard about right now—especially in light of #BuildingBookLabs25 conversations—I have lots of students asking about volunteering @skeuomorphpress.org next year—I’m so excited by their interest—but I don’t want "volunteering at the press" to become "exploiting student labor"
Workshop attendees surround table with papermaking supplies.
Drying rack full of bookmarks with the text "Building Book Labs A Book is... Spring 2025."
Person smiling and holding print of "The Tempest."
Person operating BookBeetle printing press.
Attending and helping plan #BuildingBookLabs25 has been the most incredible experience. The wonderful scholars and artists in attendance, the enlightening workshops, the community shared! 🤍 Thank you @ryancordell.org @skeumorphpress.org and all of the incredible people who made this happen!
I don’t know what species of academic optimism/workaholism led me to schedule meetings the day after #BuildingBookLabs25, but I really just want to sleep for about 48 hours
A drying rack full of white bookmarks reading in blue ink “Building Book Labs, a book is… Spring 2025”. There is an image on the bookmarks of a flower growing out of a book.
A woman with glasses mainly in shadow gestures to a power point in a dark speakeasy. The title slide reads “Open Hours at Skeuomorph Press”.
A group of participants circles a blue table as they watch an instructor demonstrate papermaking.
Feeling grateful for getting to attend #BuildingBookLabs25. In an absolutely insane time for arts, humanities, and libraries alike my work at @skeuomorphpress.org has been a vital outlet. Getting to see the incredible work by Booklabs and artists across the country shows— we’re not going anywhere!
I got my latest letterpress lasercut wood blocks to various #BuildingBookLabs25 folks, so can share photos now: trans book history; retro Mac icon for @mkirschenbaum.bsky.social bc Clippy's lines were too thin; BookBeetle logo; Design Futures; 2 x "made w/💜 by a trans ☑️ ally☑️ printer" #DHmakes
Too much to absorb at #buildingbooklabs25 to post, but I will be returning to the teaching techniques and advocacy strategies we discussed time and again over the next few months. Massive kudos to @skeuomorphpress.org and @ryancordell.org for bringing us together!
In a sign of a truly good conference, I took almost no phots at
#BuildingBookLabs25-- I was either wholly engrossed in what I was looking at, or too busy jotting down notes and ideas for future plans. Really grateful to @ryancordell.org and all the other organizers!
Sitting with a post #BuildingBookLabs25 buzz—in such a dark year, it was pure joy to learn in community with incredible book historians, artists, printers, & makers
I’m grateful to library technical specialist & photographer extraordinaire JP Goguen, who took gorgeous pictures of our time together
The #BuildingBookLabs25 symposium @skeuomorphpress.org went by too fast. Thanks to everyone I met this week for your kind advice and encouragement.
Coming down from the symposium high and now feeling the post- #BuildingBookLabs25 depression. @ryancordell.org & @skeuomorphpress.org created something very special and I’m grateful to have been a part of it.
"we're in the fab lab but not of the fab lab" @ryancordell.org #BuildingBookLabs25
@ryancordell.org works on the principle of MYBLAT: make your book lab a thing #BuildingBookLabs25
Currently mentioning the benefit of being in a community space that attracts other audiences.
what a JOY these two days have been. sorry to be missing the last bit of #buildingbooklabs25 but very very glad to have been here and to leave full of ideas, provocations, and with the faces and names of others doing this work firmly in mind. we are not alone!
Viscomi’s BLAKE AND THE IDEA OF THE BOOK is the Ur-text for #BuildingBookLabs25 community, not least because he decisively demonstrated the link between material method and critical interpretation (in 1993!). Here is a link to an early review: bq.blakearchive.org/29.1.gourlay
Haunting artist book by @transbookhistory.bsky.social, progresses from "Mary Ann Waters is a free Black woman" print via stages of evolving prints to a full archival mention of a Black trans woman that misgenders+unfrees her, shows previous prints selected the true text from that #BuildingBookLabs25
@mkirschenbaum.bsky.social names BLAKE AND THE IDEA OF THE BOOK as another vital text for book labs. We need a collaboratively generated bibliography of all the texts referred to over the last 2 days! #buildingbooklabs25
@mkirschenbaum.bsky.social is now plugging Blake and the Idea of the Book as a good source for every Book Lab #BuildingBookLabs25
I love this bc of how it insists on first principles being overt rather than tacit, +how it suggests a way of making really densely woven thinking and making communities. Returning again and again in new ways to a single source as in J Koch's lab's work on a Franciscan antiphonal #buildingbooklabs25
Jonathan Koch, in reply to a q about attracting researchers, argues we ought not to ignore "basic" things like content to create relationships in the lab—"you like books, I like books". This can loop in (and free) a diverse mixture of collaborators.
#buildingbooklabs25
6.? How do we articulate and make visible hand knowledge. How do we talk about making inquiry as a way to research?
#BuildingBookLabs25
3. Needing alternative modes of circulation of research (beyond the journal article)
4. Questions of naming/how you describe what you're doing, how can we talk collectively?
5. Model of the sciences as a way to parallel this type of doing
#BuildingBookLabs25
Ramachandran offers five possible takeaways from all of the panelists (I got a bit far in the weeds, so here's six):
1. Importance of thinking beyond the discursive
2. What does the scholar artist actually look like?
#BuildingBookLabs25
The throwable microphone is back and a ripple of terror goes through the assembly #buildingbooklabs25
