June 6th Art Hop Was Our Grand Opening!
KBAC’s Board of Directors, friends, and Park Trades Center staff have been very busy transforming our new space in Park Trades Center into a working studio for the book arts. Grants from the Irving S. Gilmore Foundation, the Kellogg Foundation, and the Arts Council of Greater Kalamazoo supported those efforts. Equipment donated by Western Michigan University’s Frostic School of Art and Waldo Library’s Department of Special Collections added substantially to our core of papermaking, typesetting, printing and bookbinding capabilities.
Our new facility offers access to an exceptional range of traditional book arts tools and equipment. In addition we continue our series of workshops for the community in all aspects of Book Arts: hand papermaking, intaglio and relief printing, lithography, letterpress, bookbinding, and creative writing. Members will receive discounts on workshops and, once trained on specialized equipment, will be able to work independently in the studio.
Below are images from the Grand Opening along with views of our space in “before” condition, some of our equipment awaiting installation and a floorplan for the space.
