Columbia Writers and Designers
Scheduled December 5 through December 27, 2008
Reception for the artists: December 12, 7 to 10 pm
CHICAGO ILLINOIS
Vespine is proud to present Columbia Writers and Designers, featuring 20 writers and 33 graphic designers from Columbia College Chicagoʼs famous undergraduate programs. The exhibition opens on December 5, 2008 and continues through December 27, 2008, with a reception for the artists and writers on December 12, from 7:00 p.m. until 10:00 p.m. Gallery hours are: Monday through Thursday, by appointment only, 5-8 pm Fridays, and 12-5 Saturdays. Please email vespinegallery@yahoo.com or visit www.vespine.org for more information.
Making a book has always been a collaborative effort of several different people with different skills to complete even a small project. These slender volumes of remarkable short stories come from Columbia Collegeʼs Fiction Writing Department and Art and Designʼs Graphic Design Department. Each department plays a role in taking the reader to places she or he might not expect to have gone, show the reader things he might not have ever seen, cause the discerning reader to evaluate ideas that will make her marvel.
Stories have been important to mankind since the dawn of recorded history. Though we may not know the exact meaning of deer and bison drawn on a cave wall, or the meaning of a glyph on a temple wall in central America or countless other man-made marks in other cradles of civilization, we know that it was one person from an earlier time telling a story. Those stories ask readers to step momentarily out of their own lives and participate in someone elseʼs, to share an experience, to become all those things we wish others might become for us.
The writers of these intimate short stories began their story telling within a tested framework known as the Story Workshop Approach ©. Each writer saw a story in his or her mind. Over weeks of journaling, sharing the story with others, honoring each otherʼs stories re-imagining scenes and giving them credulity, the story is shaped and refined until, at last, after much crafting, a confident draft is produced. The stories in this book first appeared in the Fiction Writing Departmentʼs Story Week Reader in the Spring of 2008.
The thirty-three designers in Columbiaʼs Publication Design class each chose ten different stories from a pool of twenty writers. Each designer produced a unique 60-page book using her or his selection of stories and a selection of 28 illustrations created by 14 other designers plus two of her own. Once a designers made a selection, it was their responsibility to enhance the stories presence by making them visible to the reader.
Coordinated by professors Jotham Burrello from the Fiction Department and Craig Jobson from Art and Design, Columbia Writers and Designers features work by Nicole Arand, Andrea Fertgus, Christopher Flores, Johann Flores, David Folley, Grazyna Grzesnikowska, Traci Helfers, Erin Johnson, John Lemein, Maria Polomarkakis, Sarah Sarwar, Laura Shields, Jennifer Shrader, Jason Sicat, Ricardo Sunay, Alex Trejo, Shawn Zeilenga, Jasmine Neosh, Karen Zemanick, Andrea Fishel, John Crone, Jessica Young, Casey J. Bye, Ryan Duke, Courtney Jones, James Lower, Krystn Fox, Sonne Lex, Jacquelyn Astorga, Michael P. Poloz, Melanie Datz, Gina DiPonio, Daniel Paul, Andrew Graf, Holly Fisher, Ashley Schroeder, Kristen Fiore, Nickolas Kurz, Dalia Abuamara, Amiel Arieti, Yohei Chino, Houng Nguyen Pham Dinh, Jason Frohlichstein, Brett Harmon, Debra Kayes, Emma Larsson, Matthew Macomber, Kimberly McGuire, Stephen Monfils, Nathaniel Morken, Annette Ostrander, Karilyn Owens, and
Blair Pyser
Vespine, an artist-run independent gallery in the Chicago Arts District, provides intimate exhibition space for emerging artists.
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