Saturday, October 08, 2011

Museum Roadshow to the Book Arts Jam, Oct 15


The preceding flurry of announcements is leading up to this one: For the second year, the Zymoglyphic Museum will be rolling its roadshow down the Peninsula to the bucolic hilltop campus of Foothill College (Los Altos, CA) to showcase the full range of offerings from the Zymoglyphic Museum Press! Last year's version is shown above; this year's lineup will also include a new photo-essay book and an instructive pamphlet on creating your own museum.

The full list of books available:


The Book Arts Jam is put on by the Bay Area Book Artists. It features one-of-a-kind artist-made books, as well as self-published items and materials that you can use to create your own books. In addition, there will be exhibits, demonstrations, and talks pertaining to the book arts. The show is on from 10 AM to 4 PM, and admission is free but parking is $2.

Creating Your Own Museum


In Kurt Vonnegut's novel The Sirens of Titan, one of the main characters had a childhood museum, described as "a museum of mortal remains — of endoskeletons and exoskeletons — of shells, coral, bone, cartilage, and chitin — of dottles and orts and residua of souls long gone."
Zymoglyphic Museum visitors often mention their own accumulations of detritus and effluvia, perhaps bones, rusty objects, memorabilia, or flea market finds. A new museum publication, Creating and Curating Your Own Museum, guides budding curators in the process of turning these raw materials into a personal museum. Copies will be available at the Book Arts Jam or may be downloaded in PDF format here

New Book: The Tale of the Wandering Monk


The Zymoglyphic Museum Press is tickled to announce a new book, this one a photo-essay chronicling the adventures of the museum curator's diminutive traveling companion as he explores intimate landscapes in art and nature.

The tale begins with a box of rusty detritus donated to the museum by the late Neva Beach. The timing was fortuitious as the inside of the museum was getting bulgingly full, but remained rather plain on the outside. The items in the box prompted a grand landscaping upgrade. The new garden was immediately populated by four little monks of varying temperaments. One of them, the Wandering Monk, always seeking new perspectives, has as a favorite pastime hopping into enticing miniature environments and having his picture taken.

Many of his adventures take him inside art works. For example, here he is on a ledge inside Zhan Wang's "Artificial Rock" in the de Young Museum's sculpture garden. The photographs have been gathered into a book, which will have its public debut at the Book Arts Jam. The book is also available for purchase online in the museum shop. A preview of the photographs may be seen here.