Art Books Cleveland celebrates Octavofest with Mother Earth

Art Books Cleveland (ABC) celebrates its tenth year during the 2018 Octavofest celebration. ABC at Ten: A Retrospective Exhibit at the Cleveland State University art gallery will highlight the best work of the past decade to kick off this year’s Octavofest. The exhibit opens August 31 and will run through October 5. An additional exhibit with the theme “Mother Earth” will open at Notre Dame College on October 4 and run through November 7.

ABC was initiated to bring together book and paper artists, collectors, and educators as a way to enhance their skills and to promote the book and paper arts. It offers regular hands-on workshops, discussion and demonstration sessions, visits to art book collections, and serves as a clearinghouse for information about book art activities locally and nationally. Most recently, it has incorporated outreach to new audiences, including children in the Central neighborhood. A collaboration with the Morgan Art of Papermaking Conservatory promises to extend the reach of these efforts.

ABC will play a key role in Octavofest 2018. A WatchART! event on October 2 at CSU will feature non-Western book structures by ABC members and will open this year’s Octavofest theme of “Books and Paper in Global Context.” James Canary, conservator for Lilly Library of Indiana University and an expert on Tibetan paper and books, will present a lecture at Loganberry Books on October 5, followed by A Day of Asian Books on Saturday, October 6. This day will include a lecture, demonstration, and hands-on workshop at the Cleveland Heights-University Heights Library main branch. Canary will wrap up his Cleveland visit with a lecture at Asia Services in Action on the 7th.

Ajpub’ Pablo García Ixmatá is a Tz‘utujil Maya educator, scholar, and cultural activist at the Universidad Rafael Landívar in Guatemala City. He is in Cleveland this fall to learn paper- and bookmaking at the Morgan Conservatory. Among the Octavofest events that feature him are a workshop on the Maya calendar on September 29 and a talk titled “The Maya Apprentice Project: Books and Paper in Maya Communities Past and Future” on November 15. With ABC members, he will present a workshop for young readers at the Sterling Branch of the Cleveland Public Library in support of the Promise Neighborhood initiative co-sponsored by the Morgan.

As always, Octavofest will include a wide array of activities throughout Northeast Ohio. Lectures, demonstrations, exhibits, and workshops begin in late August and run through early November.

For more information, visit engagedscholarship.csuohio.edu/octavofest/2018/ or octavofest.org.