SACRED | PROFANE - Your 3-Month Reminder
23 Sandy Gallery invites artists to participate in SACRED | PROFANE, a juried exhibition of book art focusing on religion and spirituality.
THEME – SACRED | PROFANE is seeking book art focusing on religion and spirituality. We are looking for works that cross the line between the sacred and the profane, the dichotomy of often-polarizing points of view.
Topics to consider along that razor-thin line: ritual and ceremony, creation and evolution, myth and memory, heaven and earth, superstition and scholarship, sacred and secular, rites and symbols, traditional and modern, occult and omnipresence, agnostic and atheistic, west and east and endless more. We hope to show a balanced number of sacred and profane works, so please do not be afraid to take on either, or both, themes.
Religion has a close relationship to books and texts. The Bible, the Quran, the Torah, Buddhist sutras, the Bhagavad Gita, the Dao Dejing, along with many others, are all books associated with religion. With this exhibition, book artists have a chance to explore their own relationships to and rejections of religion and spirituality through the creation of their own sacred and profane books.
MEDIA – This exhibit is open to book and paper arts related works. Artist books, sculptural books, book objects, altered books, zines, broadsides and print on demand artist books are all encouraged.
JUROR – We are grateful to Jim Carmin, who will be the juror for SACRED | PROFANE. Jim Carmin has directed the operations of the John Wilson Special Collections at Multnomah County Library since 1998. Prior to that he was an art librarian at the University of Oregon and sold books, rare and otherwise, at Powell's City of Books in Portland. He has a Bachelor's in studio art and Masters in Library Science from Ball State University, a Masters in Art History from the University of Oregon, and has attended Rare Books School at the University of Virginia with classes in bindings and typography. Related interests include reviewing contemporary fiction for The Oregonian and the Minneapolis-St. Paul Star-Tribune; letterpress printing and bookbinding; and curating exhibitions in literary and book arts. This summer he'll be teaching a course on Medieval manuscripts and early printed books at Portland State University.
AWARDS – Three artists will receive Best of Show Awards. Winners are selected upon installation of the show. In addition, we will also award the Library Purchase Prize. The winning work or works will be purchased by the gallery and donated to the artist book collection at the Multnomah County Library John Wilson Special Collections.
Exhibition on view at 23 Sandy Gallery: November 7 - December 20, 2014 Submission deadline: August 18, 2014
This one should be terrific!