Hot Metal and Cool Paper: The Black Art of Making Books

This focused exhibition presented works by private presses, including books printed by LaNana Creek Press (Charles D. Jones, Stephen F. Austin State University, Nacogdoches, Texas), the Press of the Nightowl (Dwight Agner, Athens, Ga.) and Tinhorn Press (Chuck Robertson, Atlanta, Ga.). These presses, run primarily by solo proprietors, stand as anachronistic and forceful statements of personality in the modern world, and the selected books demonstrate interesting instances of adaptation to the form. Printing has often been dubbed “the black art,” for a number of reasons, including the tendency of ink to stain, but the production of a finished book by one person is certainly a combination of will and magic. The exhibition examined interactions among type, art and text.