Friday April 5 from 6:00 p.m. – 9:00 p.m.

The KBAC joins libraries and book arts centers from around the world in this delightful April Fools celebration of the art of the book! The Edible Book Festival has been celebrated in over 20 countries including Australia, Brazil, India, Italy, Japan, Luxembourg, Mexico, New Zealand, and Russia. Our judge for this year’s competition is Judy Sarkozy, owner of Sarkozy Bakery.Visit our Edible Book page to see entries from previous years and to get ideas. A Grand Prize, chosen by our judge, and a People’s Choice Award, chosen by vote among the public, will be given to the best entries. After the judging is completed we will eat the books!

It’s simple: submit a “book” made from food—anyone can enter, and there are no fees or pre-registration required. Bring your book to the KBAC between 4:00 – 6:00 p.m., Friday April 6. The judging will begin at 7:00, and the books will be eaten at 7:05. Also on display in the KBAC gallery will be “Good Eats,” our annual exhibition of paintings, prints, photographs, and artist’s books on the delectable subject of food.

This event, our most popular of the year, is also a good opportunity to support the KBAC by making a donation. All donations will be generously matched by the Irving S. Gilmore Foundation, doubling your ability to support the KBAC.
We look forward to a feast of books!

Judge Judy Sarkozy and Director Jeff Abshear

Judges Choice Award: Brown Bear, Brown Bear by Michael Center

People’s Choice Winner: “Sheep’s Come Undone” bye the Tiara Book Club

Michael Center accepting his prize

View entries from the 2013 Edible Book Festival below.

Mary Grassel, Bill and Friends, Relief Print Accordion Book

May 3 through 24 2013
Opens durring Art Hop May 3, 6:00-9:00pm 

View the 2013 Illustrated Accordion Entries through Flickr.

The structure of an accordion book is simple: a long piece of paper is folded into pages that can be read like a book or spread open and displayed like a banner. The works on display in our exhibit The Illustrated Accordion take this form to a new level.
If you have ever asked, “What are Book Arts?” come and see how people from as far away as Europe or as close as the KBAC studio have answered this question.

April 5–27, 2013; Opening reception Friday, April 5 during Art Hop, 6 to 9 p.m.

From Dutch still-life paintings to Campbell’s Soup cans, our obsession with food is a readymade subject for art! Open to all emerging and established artists, this exhibition features two-dimensional works of art—fine prints, paintings, and collages—that incorporate food in their subject. This exhibit shared it’s opening with our Eighth Annual Edible Book Festival.
Featuring art by:  Gina D. Mucciolo & Ann C. Payne, Angela Lorenz, Beverly Fitzpatrick, Jeff Heaton, Barbara Goodsitt, Dana LeMoine, Fritzi Huber, Thimgan Hayden, Ron Testa, Ruta Butkus Marino, Aimee Lee, Maryann J. Riker, Christopher Vaughn Couse.

“Bomb” by Simon Redington

June 7—28

Opening reception June 7 during Art Hop, 6 to 9 p.m.

Today, the fine press book is thriving. This kind of artist’s book, whose character derives from the properties and pleasures of craft, has emerged as the leading edge in a field that is attracting working artists and students in increasing numbers. It is time to mark this medium’s resurgence and consider its future arc. This exhibit, organized by the Minnesota Center for Book Arts, assembles work by established and emerging artists, that reflects the best in letterpress books today.

“Sylvae” by Gaylord Schanilec

John McKaig, Saints Never Surrender I, drawing

Feb. 1–22, Opening reception Feb. 1 during Art Hop, 6 to 9 p.m.

John McKaig is a painter and printmaker who teaches at Interlochen Arts Academy in Northern Michigan and has recently completed artist residencies at the Williamsport Public Art Academy in Pennsylvania, and the Auckland Print Studio in New Zealand. John will work in our studio to create a multi-color relief print to be exhibited with his paintings and prints in the KBAC Gallery. John says, “My work is based in a strong sense of drawing, and I use images of objects (mostly ships) and the human figure to communicate ideas of our collective spiritual connection and passage through life.”

McKaig, Saints Never Surrender III, preliminary design

March 21, 7pm—Poetry reading at the Kalamazoo Public Library

Hours is an event comprised of artists and writers working around a notion of hours borrowed from The Book of Hours, a medieval monastic tradition of meditation and prayer recited at specified times. With a grant from the Kalamazoo Artistic Development Initiative (KADI) through The Arts Council of Greater Kalamazoo, Sydnee Peters organized this program allowing local artists and writers to work at the KBAC studio on collaborative projects. For more information visit us at HoursKalamazoo on Facebook.

Participating Artists and Poets:
Mindi Bagnall, Kate Borgardt, Traci Brimhall, Bonnie Campbell, Matt Cashen, Kat Cole, Kristin DeKam, Michael Dunn, Sharon Eckstein, Debbie Eisenbise, Morry Edwards, Heidi Fidler, Deborah Gang, Donna Groot, Maryellen Hains, Jana Hanka, Ladislav Hanka, Renee Jensen, Elizabeth Kerlikowske, Elizabeth King, Amelia Hansen, Kathy Kreager, Dave Marlatt, Marsha Meyer, Amy Newday, Paul Nehring, Christine Parks, Austin Peters, Sydnee Peters, Katie Platte, Robert Post, Susan Ramsey, Vicki VanAmeyden, and Mary Whalen

KBAC Gallery, Saturday March 2, 2013,  7 p.m.

Tyler Mills by Allison Walker

Brynn Saito by Lauren Paquette

Tyler Mills was born in Chicago. She is the author of Tongue Lyre, which won the 2011 Crab Orchard Series in Poetry First Book Award (Southern Illinois University Press). Her poems have appeared in AGNI, Antioch Review, Georgia Review, Nashville Review, Poetry Northwest, Prairie Schooner, TriQuarterly Online, and elsewhere; her poems have also been the recipient of awards from the Crab Orchard Review, Gulf Coast, and Third Coast. She has received a work-study scholarship from Bread Loaf and a John Woods Scholarship from the Prague Summer Program. A graduate of Bucknell (BA) and the University of Maryland (MFA, Poetry), Tyler Mills is currently pursuing a PhD in Creative Writing at the University of Illinois-Chicago.

Brynn Saito is the author of the poetry collection The Palace of Contemplating Departure, winner of the Benjamin Saltman Award and forthcoming from Red Hen Press in March, 2013. Her poetry has been anthologized by Helen Vendler and Ishmael Reed; it has also appeared in Ninth Letter, Hayden’s Ferry Review, Pleiades and Drunken Boat. Brynn was born in the Central Valley of California to a Korean American mother and a Japanese American father. She lives in the Bay Area and teaches in San Francisco.

Sat., Feb. 23, 7 to 9 p.m.

Rose Willey and Paula Presler

Local poet Rosemary Willey, author of Intended Place, will read from her new work. Joining her will be her friend Paula Presler, who will be retiring in June after 23 years as a reading teacher at The Montessori School. For many years, Rosemary has led poetry workshops for Paula’s Montessori students. Paula will share her own poems inspired by Rosemary’s teachings and the pair will also discuss the importance of poetry for young writers. A reception will follow.

Brother, poem by Jill Osier; Artist, Katie Platte

Mercy, Poem by Sandra Beasley; Artist, Aaron Cooper

Sandra Beasley is the author of I Was the Jukebox, winner of the Barnard Women Poets Prize, and Theories of Falling, winner of the New Issues Poetry Prize. Other honors for her work include selection for the 2010 Best American Poetry, the 2010 University of Mississippi Summer Poet in Residence position, a DCCAH Artist Fellowship, the Friends of Literature Prize from the Poetry Foundation, and the Maureen Egen Exchange Award from Poets & Writers. Her most recent book is Don’t Kill the Birthday Girl: Tales from an Allergic Life, a memoir and cultural history of food allergy. She lives in Washington, D.C.

Jill Osier is the recipient of the Campbell Corner Poetry Prize, the Neil Shepard Poetry Prize, and the Robert Watson Poetry Prize, as well as fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the University of Wisconsin Institute for Creative Writing.  Her recent work appears in Arts & Letters, Beloit Poetry Journal, Crazyhorse, The Gettysburg Review, Indiana Review, The Southern Review, Versal, and West Branch.  She is the author of a letterpress chapbook, Bedful of Nebraskas (sunnyoutside, 2012).  Native to northeast Iowa, she lives in Fairbanks, Alaska.

Allison Benis White is the author of Small Porcelain Head, selected by Claudia Rankine for the Four Way Books Levis Prize, and Self-Portrait with Crayon, winner of the Cleveland State University Poetry Center First Book Prize. Her poems have appeared in The American Poetry Review, The Iowa Review, and among others. Her honors include the Indiana Review Poetry Prize, Prairie Schooner’s Bernice Slote Award, and a Writers Exchange Award from Poets & Writers. She teaches at the University of California, Irvine. For more information, please visit www.allisonbeniswhite.com.Rebecca Hazelton has been published in Agni, The Southern Review, and The Gettysburg Review, featured on Verse Daily and Inknode, and included in Best New Poets 2011. She was the 2010-2011 Jay C. and Ruth Hall Poetry Fellow at the University of Wisconsin-Madison Creative Writing Institute, won The Ohio State Press/The Journal poetry award in 2011, and in 2012, won The Discovery/Boston Review Prize for her forthcoming book, Fair Copy. Her second book, Vow, is forthcoming from Cleveland State University Press.