Looking Out / Looking In: Philadelphia Center for the Book Members’ Exhibition

 

 

How do artists come by their ideas, their subject matter? This exhibition reflects two common origins: the need to understand, to articulate something about one’s life, one’s identity, or the opposite, a passion to understand, to communicate something about and to the outside world. Often, however, looking out generates introspection and looking in connects to the outside world. This exhibition also reflects that entanglement.

This exhibition is hybrid. All works are featured in this virtual exhibition. But most artist books, book objects, and a few other works are also exhibited at Swarthmore’s McCabe Library.

The Philadelphia Center for the Book, whose members range from established artists to librarians to book enthusiasts, connects the diverse community of institutions and individuals whose passion is books and serves as a catalyst to advance book arts as a vital contemporary art form. For that purpose, PCB seeks to plan and implement initiatives and projects that accomplish four main goals: exhibit book arts; educate the public, educators, and the arts community about book arts; support book artists; and work with collectors and libraries to collect, preserve and exhibit book arts.