Alexander and The Poet/Printer Tradition
Alexander's ongoing work with Chax Press is informed by a tradition of poet/printers that includes William Blake, William Morris, and Robert Creeley. He learned many fine arts bookmaking techniques studying with Walter Hamady at the University of Wisconsin Department of Fine Arts in Madison, Wisconsin during the late seventies and early eighties, a time of particular ferment in the book arts, whose culminating moment was the presentation of Breaking the Bindings: American Book Art Now by the Elvehjem Museum in Madison. This was the first museum-scale book arts exhibition in the United States; Alexander was the lead writer on a team that wrote the introduction to the exhibition catalogue.
Read more about this topic: Charles Alexander (poet And Book Artist)
Famous quotes containing the words poet, printer and/or tradition:
“It is an odd jealousy: but the poet finds himself not near enough to his object. The pine-tree, the river, the bank of flowers before him, does not seem to be nature. Nature is still elsewhere.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (18031882)
“Although then a printer by trade, he listed himself in this early directory as an antiquarian. When he was asked the reason for this he replied that he always thought every town should have at least one antiquarian, and since none appeared for the post, he volunteered.”
—For the State of Iowa, U.S. public relief program (1935-1943)
“And hereby hangs a moral highly applicable to our own trustee-ridden universities, if to nothing else. If we really wanted liberty of speech and thought, we could probably get itSpain fifty years ago certainly had a longer tradition of despotism than has the United Statesbut do we want it? In these years we will see.”
—John Dos Passos (18961970)