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Chris kubiet/Chronicle
Helmet Becker prepares industrial hemp for paper-making at Columbia’s new book and paper arts center at 1104 S. Wabash.
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| Paper Arts Center comes home |
by Danielle Haas
Staff Writer |
After years in their makeshift home, a rented space in the Pakula Building at 218 S. Wabash Ave., the Book and Paper Arts Center has finally come home to Columbia.
Just before the start of the fall semester, the historic Ludington Building at 1104 S. Wabash welcomed its first tenants as the new Columbia campus building.
“This building was built for the American Book Company, and it’s kind of neat; 100 years later we’re bringing the book back to the Ludington Building,” said Bill Drendel, Director of the Book and Paper Arts Center. “We’re making books here once again; it’s really poetic.”
The Book and Paper Arts Center was founded in 1994, the result of a merge between Artist Bookworks and Paper Press. Shortly afterwards it came under the wing of Columbia and offered an interdisciplinary major in the Arts Department. The Center offers a Master of Fine Arts as well.
The new space, the entire 20,000 square feet on the second floor of the Ludington Building, is much larger than what they had to work with for the past five years, which was 12,000 square feet.
The new space houses two galleries, and one of them acts as an epi-center, an open hall with doors leading off to the other rooms. There is also a paper studio, a computer lab, binding rooms, a darkroom and more.
Assistant Director of the Center Kitz Rickert says that eventually they would like to do interdepartmental work.
“We’ve already worked with Senior Seminar in helping them make journals.” said Rickert. “ We also work with some Photo classes. Next semester we hope to offer undergraduate classes through the Art Department.”
Bill Drendel said they would love to help other majors incorporate the Center into their work.
“We’d love to have any department here,” said Drendel. I’d love to see the place being used. We have a lot to offer, both of the facilities and the equipment we have to use as well as the classes we teach.”
The Center offers a wide variety of classes, from a core of requirements for the graduate student to community workshops, special events and lectures.
Christine Fabian, a graduate of the program loves the new facilities and spoke very highly of the Center.
“The old Center was a bit more of a raw space,” said Fabian. “There was always a lot of activity, though. This space is quite a bit larger with more equipment. It makes it a lot easier to work.”
Fabian said the program doesn’t just push the process, but also the creativity and ideas behind it.
“The focus isn’t just on the learning or the book, but on the content and your ideas as the artist.”
Currently the Center is working on building up its clientele and getting settled in their new environment.
“I think it’s pretty cool that we’re in a building that was built for the book,” said Fabian. “I feel that there’s a very good energy in this building. I think it’s a very positive change for the department and a good move by Columbia.”
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Views expressed here are not necessarily those of the Journalism Department or the college.
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