Robert Bringhurst

This will be a hymn and a meditation, not an argument – a hymn to the magic that happens when craft and vision intertwine, fusing internal and external worlds, and a meditation on the further wonderful fact that, when language and time are drawn into this process, there is more magic still. Sometimes there’s magic enough to ignite a portable universe: the thing we call a book. Some books have lasted for thousands of years; countless others have vanished. Books can and do sometimes wear out. But many great books have vanished because they and the civilizations that sustained them were casually or deliberately destroyed. Recent events – political, ecological, and epidemiological – have given us all some forceful reminders of how fragile is the entire human enterprise and how great the human capacity for self-betrayal and self- destruction. With these factors in mind, I’ll be reviewing several episodes – some famous and some forgotten – in the history of literature, calligraphy, typography, and printing.

Robert Bringhurst is a poet, typographer, and linguist. His book The Elements of Typographic Style, first published in 1992, will celebrate its thirtieth anniversary this year with the publication of a new fifth edition. It has been widely translated and is used by typographers, printers, and publishers around the world. Bringhurst was for many years an active contributing editor of the legendary San Francisco journal Fine Print. His recent books include Palatino: The Natural History of a Typeface. He is also a lifelong student of Native American languages and a major scholar in the field of oral literature.

Inge Bruggeman

Principles of Lava and Language
This talk explores parallels between land and language in a series of related bookworks inspired by geological representations. Inge will discuss her most recent work created while living and working in Reno, Nevada where the surrounding landscape seeped into her consciousness and left a lasting impression.

Inge Bruggeman lives and works in Berkeley, California where she makes fine press artist’s books under her imprint INK-A! Press. She also makes a variety of artist’s books, prints, and other text-based art that revolves around the idea of the book — the book as object, artifact, and cultural icon. Inge recently left her position as associate professor at the University of Nevada Reno to work with the CODEX Foundation as the incoming executive director. She is also teaching the History of the Printed Book in its Historical Context at The Bancroft Library at UC Berkeley and is the current board chair of the Fine Press Book Association.

William Fox

The Activist Archivist
Since 2009 the Center for Art + Environment at the Nevada Museum of Art has been collecting individual artist and art organizational archives documenting human creative interactions with natural, built, and virtual environments. More than 1.5 million items from more than 1500+ artists working on all seven continents comprise a unique resources that brings together art, science, and traditional indigenous practices to help researchers create new knowledge about our world. Most of these archives are from living and environmentally active artists and organizations, meaning that the archives are acquired during and even before projects occur, and that the Center is actively promoting the endeavors. Fox will discuss what it means to be an activist archivist, and to encourage the creation of artist’s books as important components in field and studio work.

William L. Fox, Director of the Center for Art + Environment at the Nevada Museum of Art in Reno, Nevada, has variously been called an art critic, science writer, and cultural geographer. He has published sixteen books on cognition, art, and landscape, more than a hundred essays in art monographs, magazines, and journals, and fifteen collections of poetry. Fox has researched and written books set in the Antarctic, the Arctic, the Himalaya, and the deserts of Chile, Australia, and the United States. He is a fellow of both the Royal Geographical Society and Explorers Club, and recipient of fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, National Endowment for the Humanities, and National Science Foundation. He has been a visiting scholar at the Getty Research Institute, the Clark Art Institute, the Australian National University, the National Museum of Australia, and the Oslo School of Architecture and Design. His most recent book is Michael Heizer: The Once and Future Monuments.