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BY NINA PELAEZ

In print | Published February 4, 2010

Combining the creative elements of printing, illustration and bookbinding, Mary Phelan builds an intricate craft. Phelan, a professor of book arts here at Swarthmore as well as an associate professor at the University of the Arts, is currently displaying her work at McCabe Library. The exhibition, titled “The Working Process,” highlights the collaborative aspect of printing and book making. It featured spans from the whimsical to the traditional and from the finished edition to the work in progress, created using a variety of different book structures.

The works featured include Phelan’s own designs and those produced by her press, the Irish Pig Press, but the pieces also include the contributions of other artists — from Swarthmore students in her book arts class to collaborations by groups of print artists to poet and Swarthmore professor Natalie Anderson.

“Everyone brings something new to the conversation,” Phelan said. “Every project will have its ups and downs, but the collaborative process is always interesting.”

All of the work featured is fine press printed, using handset type. This method of printing, which is different from just making photocopies of pages or printing them from a computer, calls for a great deal of planning and painstaking work. Phelan said, “The first time I printed handset type it seemed totally natural and exciting — the process of making the paper, the arrangement of type on a press bed and the punch that you get when the paper hits the metal type. It is very satisfying.”

One of these collaborative works, “Exquisite Horse,” is based on the surrealist visual game Exquisite Corpse. The piece uses print images of the front or back halves of a horse, each one produced by a different artist, and pairs them together. The result is a seemingly infinite combination of images, and with each half designed in a completely different style, the results can be quite hilarious. Phelan’s own addition to this sequence is the rear end of a pig — half the emblem of her own press.

Two collaborative books done with students from the Book Arts course, “Relevancy” and “The Middle of Somewhere,” allow us to see some of the work that Phelan does in her course. Tayarisha Poe ’12, who is currently in the class, said, “[Book making] connects in ways I never expected to all different parts of art.” Poe, who is also interested in filmmaking and fashion design, saw similarities between these three disciplines and others. “Making books is similar to choosing what shots or colors to include in a scene,” she said.

The class has already begun learning different kinds of structures to make books, and many of the students have already completed their first book: a Buttonhole Stitch Sketchbook. Poe mentioned how relaxing the process can be. “It’s a repetitive thing that pulls you in,” She said. “It’s very calming — doing one stitch, and then another and another.”

Phelan expressed her enthusiasm for working with Swarthmore students by saying “I love my classes at both schools but I am always impressed with my class at Swarthmore where students with usually little art training do such interesting work.” Her course, offered every spring, gives students the opportunity to learn about and complete their very own artist books.

Pamela Harris, the outreach and instruction librarian at McCabe Library, worked closely with Mary Phelan on this exhibition. “Without artisans like Mary who are devoted to this art form it would be a lost art,” Harris said. This exhibition draws from the library’s own impressive and exquisite collection of artists books, which is a part of the Swarthmore College Special Collections.

This exhibition at McCabe library is a part of Philagrafika 2010, the first of what will be an annual event in Philadelphia. The event, which will include more than 300 artists and over 80 venues throughout and around the city, highlights the importance of printmaking as an art form. “We are pretty excited,” Harris said about the library’s involvement in Philagrafika. “We hope to make [our participation] an annual event.”

Anderson, who is currently involved in a project with Phelan, also spoke about the importance of the fine press as an art form. “To think about how the shape and visual aspects of the object — that is, the book — match and provide appropriate conveyance for words that are in the book is extremely exciting for me,” she said.

Anderson and Phelan have been working together with Philadelphia artist Sarah McEneaney to create a book featuring a series of Anderson’s poems, Phobophobia, written about outlandish phobias. The book, which is currently unfinished, is one of the pieces displayed in the exhibition and serves as a representation of the many phases and painstaking processes that go into completing a fine print book.

Anderson explained that the production of the piece has taken “much longer than expected” but feels that “the final product will be even more distilled as a result.” She described working with Phelan and McEneaney as an “interesting experiment for all three of us,” and one she certainly has seen as rewarding. “I can’t wait for the book to take its final shape — to come to embodiment,” she said.

This exhibition proves to be both innovative and imaginative, bringing together the work of Swarthmore faculty and students and contributing to a larger and highly relevant artistic event. Each piece exhibited also stands as an individually evocative and exceedingly poetic work, representing the book and text as artifact.

The exhibition will be on view through Feb. 27 in McCabe Library. In addition, Mary Phelan will be giving a talk about her work at 12:00 p.m. on Feb. 25 at McCabe.

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