LibGuides: Special Collections Center: Exhibitions & Events

Contact Information

Schedule a viewing appointment
specialcollections@c.ringling.edu

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https://calendly.com/goldstein-library

Cheri Marks (she, her) MFA, MSI
Special Collections Curator and Archivist

Cmarks@ringling.edu

941- 359-7583

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Exhibitions organized by the Special Collections Center

Just the funny stuff
Curated by Janelle Rebel, Digital Curation & Special Collections Librarian
On view January 9 through February 7, 2023

Well folx, the 2022 rankings are in and Finland is the world’s happiest country and Iceland is the world’s most peaceful place to live. The US came in number sixteen on the World Happiness Report and ranked 129th on the Global Peace Index. These haven’t been particularly funny times for a lot of us, and maybe, just maybe, we could use a moment of levity.

In the spirit of best-of lists as we kick off a new year, here are my top ten humorous picks, plus one, of materials from the Brizdle-Schoenberg Special Collections Center. I had a noticeable proclivity towards black and white printing so that became part of my selection criteria. No wisecracking books in color here. Anthropomorphic animals and objects? Check. Some sexy silliness? You got it. Highbrow potty wit? You’ve come to the right place.

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The annotations are, in fitting with the topic, VERY casual. Some might say the most casual I’ve written to date. There’s no one way to read a book and no right way to read a collection, and so without further ado, my 10 + 1, Just the funny stuff.

— Janelle Rebel
Tarot Visions: Illuminating Decks by Womxn Artists
August 17 through November 23, 2022

Tarot Visions showcases the art of tarot decks created by womxn artists using photography, collage, painting, and illustration. Fascinating and influential tarot decks from the past one hundred years are on display, with an emphasis on recent decks by living artists.
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Newly released reference sources on tarot art published by Taschen, Abrams, Quarto, and Frances Lincoln allow readers the opportunity to discern the contributions of womxn artists upon the imagery of tarot.* While the history of tarot dates back to 1441 or possibly as early as 1420, the internationally popular Rider-Waite-Smith Tarot deck (originally published in 1909) with illustrations by Pamela Colman Smith has influenced generations of tarot artists, including many in this exhibition.**

The assembly of decks included here is not exhaustive but one entrée into an illuminating, and ongoing story about womxn artists in the world of tarot. Discover symbolically intriguing decks intended for divination or self-discovery, diverse visual interpretations of the archetypes and emblems on the major and minor arcana cards, and the creators behind the decks in their own words. Tarot Visions gathers work by: Pamela Colman Smith (1878–1951), Tillie Walden, Alejandra Luisa Léon, Maja D’Aoust Witch of the Dawn, Mary Evans, Ithell Colquhoun (1906–1988), Bea Nettles, The Story Medicine, Safara Wanjagi, and Olivia M. Healy.

The Brizdle-Schoenberg Special Collections Center recently began collecting tarot decks to increase equity in our history of illustration collection. We seek out areas of graphic arts where womxn artists have historically been present (even if not properly credited or recognized), are currently flourishing, and altering our expectations.

Check out our weekly artist features on Facebook and Instagram throughout the exhibition!

* See e.g. Jessica Hundley, Tarot (Taschen: Köln, 2020); Laetitia Barbier, Tarot and Divination Cards: A Visual Archive (New York: Abrams, 2021); Holly Adams Easley and Esther Joy Archer, The History of Tarot Art: Demystifying the Art and Arcana, Deck by Deck (Bellevue, WA: Quarto, 2021); and Sarah Bartlett, Iconic Tarot Decks: The History, Symbolism and Design of over 50 Decks (London: Frances Lincoln, 2021).

**Although not included here, other influential 20th century decks by womxn artists include the Thoth Tarot which is based on a system designed by Aleister Crowley with artwork by Frieda Harris (first published in 1944) and Motherpeace which is a mini round tarot deck published by Karen Vogel and Vicki Nobel in 1981.
90 Years in the Ringling College Archives
Curated by Alexandra Vargas-Minor
January 17 through May 13, 2022

The Ringling College Archives invite you to take a glimpse into its collections through its inaugural exhibition, 90 Years in the Ringling College Archives. Founded in October 1931 as the School of Art of the John and Mable Ringling Art Museum and Junior College, Ringling College of Art and Design has become a pillar of the art and design community in Sarasota. This exhibition commemorates nine decades of Ringling College’s accomplishments, hurdles, and happenings that were pivotal to the institution’s growth.
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Walking through the exhibition, each shelf has items organized by decade to invite the viewer to learn about a sampling of the administrative happenings, campus planning developments, and student life activities at Ringling College. From a letter written and signed by John Ringling, to student publications and sketches of old campus buildings by former students, the exhibition also lets viewers see some of the primary sources preserved and made accessible by the Ringling College Archives.

90 Years in the Ringling College Archives barely scratches the surface on the story of Ringling College’s history and the Ringling College Archives’ collections. As the Archives continue to grow, we look forward to showcasing and collecting materials that document student activities and experiences, and the activities of campus offices.
Louise Odes Neaderland: Xerographic Bookworks 1981-2017
On view September 2 to December 3, 2021
Video promo online

Campus only reception: Oct 21, 11am-1pm, light refreshments + remarks at 12pm
Public + campus reception by RSVP: Oct 21 3-6pm, light refreshments + remarks at 5pm

This is the first retrospective dedicated to the artist’s books of Louise Odes Neaderland (1932—). As a politically-engaged printmaker, photographer, bookmaker, and raconteur for over four decades, Neaderland has been influential to generations of artists, making significant contributions to the development of mail art, copy art, and the democratic multiple.
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Perhaps best known for her work as the director of the International Society of Copier Artists (I.S.C.A.) and the publisher of the I.S.C.A. Quarterly (1982–2003), she has not yet received widespread recognition for her advancement of independent artist’s publishing.

To kick start a critical evaluation of her work, this exhibition includes nearly eighty projects—represented here in published editions and variable printings as well as in paste-ups, master copies, and direct imaging sources. Organized chronologically and accompanied by a full bibliography, her projects snake throughout the Brizdle-Schoenberg Special Collections Center.

As a prolific, message-oriented book artist, Neaderland’s books pivot from political commentary and satire, to philosophical wonderings and existential humor, to works on aging and relationships. Drawing from a deep well of inspiration as a reader and a connected global citizen, the copy machine fits the nature of her artistic practice.

The projects featured in the exhibition are from the Louise Neaderland Collection of Copy Art at the Brizdle-Schoenberg Special Collections Center. Additional loans have been generously provided by the Artists’ Book Collection of the Pratt Institute Libraries, the Ella Strong Denison Library at Scripps College, and the Special Collections and Archives at Boise State University.
Vis / Bib
January 25 through May 13, 2021
Video preview online

This exhibition theorizes and recognizes experimental subject bibliography—projects that explore artifactual, intellectual, spatial, and design possibilities simultaneously—as an artistic and poetic practice. It hones in on a niche territory that has blossomed in recent history, reviewing fifteen compelling visio-biblio-centric projects undertaken by artists, writers, designers, and other cultural workers.
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Researching and selecting works to include in a bibliography is an act of model-making, of knowledge production. Partial knowledges come together in a bibliography to form an evolving body of knowledge, to make a new model.

We are undoubtedly at a critical juncture in our collective narrative. Destabilizing arrangements of resources challenge canonical norms and counter algorithmic recommendation loops. The visual bibliographic model, like other theoretical models, has an important role to play as “a co-producer of reality” to use a phrase of Olafur Eliasson.

From artists’ books and online media to stack interventions and reading room installations, the makers gathered here are imagining and enacting new realities.

This exhibition is a small part of an ongoing research project and forthcoming monograph Bibliographic Performances & Surrogate Readings (The Everyday Press, UK) that is expressly dedicated to surveying artistic and poetic practices in bibliography, defining a new art historical genre, and learning from a host of diverse voices.
From the Vault
August 31 through December 19, 2020

From the Vault introduces the collections of the Brizdle-Schoenberg Special Collections Center through selected works from the vault. Engage a variety of primary sources from twelve collections: Artists’ Books, Broadsides & Posters, Exhibition Catalogs & Printed Matter, Facsimile Editions, Illustrated Books, Miniature Books, Optical Toys, Periodicals, Photobooks, Pop-up Books, Prints & Engravings, and Zines.
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This exhibition corresponds with a new SC Collection Guide that contains video, item descriptions, critical questions for self-reflection/discussion, and more.
The Artistic World of Colette: Paris 1900-1930
Curated by Janelle Rebel with Élyane Dezon-Jones
In collaboration with New College of Florida & The Colette Project Sarasota
February 28 through April 24, 2020
Opening reception: Thursday, March 5, 4:00 p.m. - 7:00 p.m.

Provocative and prolific, the French writer Colette (1873-1954) was a novelist, journalist, and actress, a liberated woman in a changing France. In her lifetime, she published nearly eighty volumes of writing—short stories, novels, reviews, reportage, and dramas. Her work has been translated into forty languages and adapted for stage, film, and television.

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This exhibition highlights the literary and artistic world of Colette’s Paris—an exceptionally creative cross-section of persons, personalities, and art forms. Discover period illustrated books, livre d'artiste, prints, and ephemera to peek inside a network of illustrators, writers, designers, and editors affiliated with Colette.

A small circulating library with additional materials is available for check-out on the first floor.

As a digital extension of this exhibition, the Brizdle-Schoenberg Special Collections Center at Ringling College of Art and Design launched Colette in France, an interactive Google Earth mapping project. It provides a chronological view of the various addresses where Colette lived in Paris and beyond: bit.ly/colette-map.

On the centennial of her 1920 novel Chéri, the Mellon-funded The Colette Project Sarasota is a celebration of Colette’s love of literature and music, cats and dogs, food and flowers. The programming spans across organizations in Sarasota and includes book club discussions, lectures, performances, film screenings, and more. All events are free and open to the public unless otherwise noted. Please see The Colette Project Sarasota for full details: bit.ly/colette-project-sarasota.
Your Day & Your World
Co-curated by Andrew Wang and Janelle Rebel
January 21 through February 21, 2020

The lives of minorities are all too often characterized by their marginalization, causing those at the fringes of mainstream society to be perpetually identified through victimhood. Consequently, these individuals are dehumanized, and their agency further minimized.
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This exhibition presents select print materials by artists interested in challenging the grossly simplified identities and narratives that have been imposed on them. In these works, they recenter their own experiences. They explore what it means to inhabit their bodies and to belong on the periphery.

These works challenge viewers to suspend their own assumptions in order to provide a platform for the misrepresented, the invisible, and the non-conforming. They reinscribe public knowledge through anecdote, satire, poetry, autoethnography, and critique. Through their work, they invite us into their worlds.

Printed matter by Eloisa Aquino, Tia Blassingame, Ben Blount, Sky Cubacub, KaKeART, Amos Paul Kennedy, Jr., Glenn Ligon, Patricia Nguyen, Laurence Rasti, Tomoko Sawada, Clarissa T. Sligh, Mark Addison Smith, Jennifer White-Johnson & Kevin T. Johnson Jr.
The Kitchen Is Now Open
August 12 through October 18, 2019
This exhibition will be traveling to the Venice Public Library December 3, 2019 through January 4, 2020.

The possibilities surrounding food preparation and the dining table have long been a subject of interest to artists—from Alison Knowles’s Fluxus proposition “Make a salad” (1962) and its subsequent performances and Michael Rakowitz’s socially-engaged Enemy Kitchen (2003-ongoing) that teaches Americans how to make Iraqi food to Judy Chicago’s feminist-intervention-installation The Dinner Party (1979) and Joseph Grigely’s Untitled Conversation at the Potato Cafe (1996), a tableau of remnants from a meal shared between dining companions.

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The Kitchen Is Now Open takes a small shift from this trajectory to specifically look at the legacy of the cookbook as an expressive genre and the forms it has taken in the hands of modern and contemporary artists. The exhibition contains a selection of artists’ cookbooks, recipes, and food scores from 1945–2019. Readers will find recipe ideas—practical, delicious, humorous, pointed—for every course.

Some projects approach cooking and art making as an act of radical hospitality, others draw attention to the hidden creativity of domestic labor, others share their embodied joy of eating. Themes include: At the Genetically Modified Table; Chewing on Globalization; The Memory of Dinners Past; The Art of Food Illustration; A Recipe of Romance & Heartache; Second Wave Feminism and the Terrain of the Kitchen; The Artwork Is and Is Not Really About the Food; Artists and Writers, Combine and Stir.
Process-ing History: The Photobook and the Archive
March 20 through July 26, 2019

The visual and textual documents, files, and objects that make up an archive are traces of collected memory. They are the fragments which are used to write and construct history. We amass personal archives, community archives, institutional archives, governmental archives, and so on as ways of remembering. To stave off forgetting.
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Photography as a recording device at once seems sufficiently suited to capture its subjects and serve as reliable evidence, while in the same click offers a limited view—distorting subjects and obscuring details. The photograph, like other forms of documentation, is partial and its partiality has the ability to shape subsequent readings of historical events.

The artists in this exhibition occupy unique ground. They utilize the photograph and the form of the photobook to encroach on possibilities of the archive and the power of the archivist. Their projects offer new interpretations of the archive, interventions into archival documentation, and enactments of counter archives and anarchives. In many instances the artists use pre-existing photographs or found negatives, but in a few instances incorporate their own original photographs.
Step and Repeat: Pattern in Artists' Publications
Opens November 9, 2018 through January 30, 2019

Step and Repeat excavates the pleasures of pattern in the coverings, interiors, linings, and details of thirty artists’ publications. Visually arranged into conceptual motifs (flora & fauna, power, psychedelic, geometric, experimental, liquid, figures, and security), these books aim to mesmerize, distract, propel, disrupt, and entice the reader.
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It coincides with the opening of a new permanent display Textile and Wallpaper Block Printing, 18th to 20th c. in the Special Collections Center hallway. This permanent exhibit presents a historical snapshot of the hand and machine processes involved in creating pattern blocks and producing decorative designs for wearable textiles and home furnishings. The blocks, castings, and roller on display were generously donated to the Center by Patrick Lindhardt, Professor Emeritus, Ringling College of Art + Design.
an untitled show about Trump, the alt-right, and the state of things
June 1, 2018 through September 8, 2018

With ephemera, publications, and politically-engaged art by: Alexandra Sobiecki, Alfred Jarry, Antonia Wright, Cain Press, Chris Maddox, Dale Zine, Dan Wittig, Desert Island (including Mackenzie Baker), Devyn Galindo, FICTILIS, Foolscap Press, J. Morrison, Joachim Schmid, Louise Neaderland, Miranda July, Primary Information (including Aida Ruilova, Alice Tippit, David Benjamin Sherry, Jonathan Horowitz, Marilyn Minter, Martha Wilson, Monica de la Torre, Paul Chan, Paul Ramirez Jonas, Rachel Harrison, Trevor Shimizu), Richard Kraft, Russ White, Tom Scarpino, and Visitor.
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A short essay by the curator and a supplementary library of films and reading material accompanies the exhibition.
Drawn In: Wordless Stories & Mises-en-scène
February 5 through April 20, 2018

WHERE ARE THE CAPTIONS? The speech bubbles? The sound effects? Drawn In: Wordless Stories & Mises-en-scène presents new and recent graphic novels, alternative comics, zines, and artists’ books that communicate by other means.
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Sometimes this illustrated craft has been referred to by what it 1.) lacks, e.g. as wordless stories (without language) or silent narratives (without hearing); 2.) privileges, e.g. as visual storytelling (with its emphasis on sight); 3.) exchanges, e.g. as wordless picture stories (subtracting literacy and adding visual literacy); or 4.) professes as its medium, e.g. as a novel in woodcuts (a specific vehicle of expression). To pull from Scott McCloud’s storytelling terms, this genre might best be dubbed moment-frame-image-flow stories. While a name reliant on strategic attributes is at once a positive definition of the genre, it is matter-of-factly, a muddle of words. The exemplification of linguistic deficiency is not surprisingly, unavoidable.

The forms of graphic narration on display at the Brizdle-Schoenberg Special Collections Center represent an array of approaches. Inventive narratives (José Domingo, Adventures of a Japanese Business Man; Vincent Perriot, Entre Deux; Aidan Koch, The Dancer at Midnight) are met by less-sequential and outright non-sequential narratives (David Sandlin, Lobe Story; Adam Shecter, Like Ghosts). Non-narrative sequences (Chris Uphues, Black Hair; Allyson Mellberg and Jeremy Taylor, Lichen Ocean; Mel Kadel and Travis Millard, Who’s Gonna Empty the Catbox???) cue up beside illustrated panoramas and carousels-in-the-round (Ugo Gattoni, Bicycle; Radha Pandey, Hibernation; Carrie Ann Plank and Macy Chadwick, Span). Protagonist-less scenes (Jason Roy, A Masterless Universe; and Roxane Lumeret, Dialogue De Souris) find company among thrillers (Noel Freibert, Mr. Cellar’s Attic), murder-ballads (Ian Huebert, Knoxville Girl), and erotic quests (Edie Fake, Gaylord Phoenix).

Readers can check out additional wordless stories and mises-en-scène on a bookshelf of rotating materials.
Every miniature book in the collection, measuring no more than three inches, arranged in various states of attention and repose
September 21 through October 16, 2017

Every miniature book in the collection, measuring no more than three inches, arranged in various states of attention and repose is a staged gathering of tiny media looking more or less natural. This exhibition considers the enduring fascination of the miniature book vis-à-vis scholarship on the exaggeration of scale and new advancements on the affects and aesthetics of cuteness.
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The smallness of miniature books isn't just a means of creating a portable version of a text. As Susan Stewart argues in On Longing: Narratives of the Miniature, the Gigantic, the Souvenir, the Collection, the significance of their stature can be understood as a kind of extreme exaggeration—both the idea of a book and the realization of its objectness are pushed to the limits of reasonability. As an object at the outskirts of reason, the miniature book operates from an anti- or non-authoritarian position, historically having more in common with "the feminine, the childish, the mad, the senile," etc. (Stewart, xiii). As such, this exhibition adds to that the pleasure of their cuteness, a cuteness that can disarm the viewer, proffer critique, invite play, or elicit care.

The miniature book collection at the Brizdle-Schoenberg Special Collections Center is grouped into eleven microchapters: the miniature as genre; the miniature and mad technique; the miniature as amulet; the miniature ad infinitum; the sociability of cuteness; the ecstatics of scale; the miniature as prototype; narrative worlds, abridged; the acuteness of cuteness; beholding the cute object; and mapping the ridiculous.

Many of the miniature books on display were created by hobbyist printers in the Amalgamated Printers’ Association (APA), acquired and generously donated to the Center by longtime letterpress printer Judi Sterne in honor of Harold E. Sterne. These miniatures are little in an additional sense, like the “little” publications described by Beatriz Colomina. They are “set apart from established” works by their small circulation and non-commercial production—bibliographic marvels produced with little support (The Small Utopia Ars Multiplicata, 203).

By aggregating discussions of publication together with theories of cuteness, this exhibition reframes and reevaluates some core considerations about the miniature book and its counterpart: minibibliophilia.
Encoded & Encrypted
May 24 through August 31, 2017

To encode, some kind of conversion takes place. When we markup text for the screen, <strong>this</strong> displays this. With encryption, a conversion of form occurs as well, only with the added intent to restrict access. A receipt displays X’s to hide all but the last 4-digits of your credit card number. It harbors a secret, your secret, and protects it. As acts of translation and acts of concealment, encoding and encryption reside on the same twisted möbius.
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The artists’ publications on display at the Brizdle Schoenberg Special Collections Center are brought together under this premise. The exhibition highlights a facsimile (1963) of the visually and linguistically coded wonder of 15th century printing, the Hypnerotomachia poliphili, and asks in what ways has symbolism always been a form of encryption?

This early exemplar is accompanied by a selection of contemporary bookworks by artists, designers, and writers. Many utilize sign systems to encode and encrypt, as is the case with the subversive shorthand of Barbara Leoff Burge in None of Your Damn Business (2009); the storytelling ideograms in Warja Lavater’s artists’ books (c. 1965–1974); and the braille compositions in Rachel Simkover's An Anthology of Concrete Poetry (Braille Edition) (2013). Other works in the exhibition like Book from the Ground (2013) by Xu Bing are encoded to reach a global, expanded readership, while works like Gelbes Buch (2004) by Cyril Dietrich participate in willful distortion and refuse to be read. BEAUT. E (Code) (2005) by Karen Hanmer can be read by both humans and machines, human: bot (2014) by Joe Milo is written from the perspective of a machine to a human reader, and the beguiling world of the Codex seraphinianus (1981) by Luigi Serafini is a sendup to an imaginary civilization of human-machines.

The exhibition entangles the visual and linguistic possibilities of the alphabetic, the ideographic, the algorithmic, and the enigmatic.
*More* is More: Xerographic Exchange and the I.S.C.A. Quarterly
February 1 through March 10, 2017

In the spring of 1982, the International Society of Copier Artists (I.S.C.A.) launched the first issue of a radically democratic assemblage project called the I.S.C.A. Quarterly. Louise Neaderland, the director of the Society and the publication set out to legitimize xerography, emphatically declaring that “copy art is not junk art.” Neaderland envisioned the Quarterly as a living laboratory, “a forum in which artists exchange ideas, images, and techniques,” and in effect connected electronic media artists and mail artists working in towns large and small all across the U.S. and abroad. The accessibility of the copy machine combined with a participatory publishing model gathered editioned work by professional artists and amateurs alike, who could join the Quarterly as contributing members or submit work through open calls.
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Throughout its twenty-one year run, Neaderland and her colleagues championed the unsynthesized voices of many, curating the Quarterly only “to a very modest extent.” The compilations of work—from timely responses to global events and media news to introspective investigations of the psychological, spiritual, and domestic realities of contemporary experience—resonate loudly with the present. To look at the I.S.C.A. Quarterly expecting cohesion would be to miss the point. This is a publication-cum-community gathering based on a philosophy of more is more. From unbound prints and special-format releases to ragtag spiral bound issues and overstuffed boxes of bookworks, the Quarterly devised new prompts and opportunities for its artists, in turn exciting subscribers through the generosity of too much.

This exhibition aims to show a representative sample—if there can be one—from the thousands of xerographic experiments submitted during the first ten years of the I.S.C.A. Quarterly, as well as to map a few connections to Ringling College’s recent past. The Brizdle Schoenberg Special Collections Center has an almost complete run—thanks to the vision of former library staff members Yvonne Morse and Patti Roberts who promoted organizations like the I.S.C.A. throughout their tenure. The Ringling School of Art Library became a supporting member of the Quarterly in 1985, alongside such institutions as the Getty, MoMA, RISD, and Yale; and by 1987 Morse and Roberts had each become contributing artists to the I.S.C.A. Quarterly. The exhibition also gives a nod to Reproductions, an ambitious spin-off publication started by Morse and Roberts that assembled copier art by Ringling’s students, staff, and faculty, as well as regional artists, and notable I.S.C.A. members.

Exhibitions hosted or co-curated by the Special Collections Center

The Mangroves of Masters Bayou: Towards a Philosophy of a Natural Spot 
February 13 through May 12, 2023
Art Walk: Friday, February 24, 4:00 - 7:00 p.m.
Artist Talk: Monday, February 27, 11:30 a.m. - 12:05 p.m.

Mangrove forests are magically material. Here, existing by definition in liminal spaces where sea water meets fresh water, fertility abounds. Mangrove leaves drop and decompose, forming a fetid mud beneath their trunks, creating land where there was no land, and providing dwellings for all manner of fish and crustaceans. Their wealth of food sources has been important to human inhabitants. Today, the protection these plants afford against dangerous weather formations is more important than ever.
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Motifs of mangroves have inspired many. Poets have found extraordinary raw material for their works here. Caribbean novelists and philosophers throughout the world have explored the rhizomatic connections in the structure of mangals which inform our understanding of common existential issues.

The Mangroves of Masters Bayou, an installation by guest artist Jay Youngdahl, explores myriad meanings in mangrove forests. It is inspired by Masters Bayou, a part of Tampa Bay which abuts the Weedon Island Nature Preserve, and a locale where a vibrant Native American culture flourished for at least one thousand years. The exhibition touches on the complexity of the issues, material and ideological, that inhabit this liminal space, and takes over the Special Collections Center's exhibition cases and reading room.

The installation is based on Youngdahl's recent photography and research at AWAIRE, the archeological dig on Weedon Island. His artwork considers the effect of human, botanical, and aquatic habitation in the mangal. Graphic representations of artistic decorations employed on pottery by the Weedon Island civilization, as well as found objects and ideas from contemporary Floridian life and culture line the exhibition space. The exhibition shows evidence of today’s human habitation including boating and the effects of over-fertilized lands around the water. Large-scale photographs, abstractions taken from a kayak in Masters Bayou over the last eighteen months, cover the reading room tables. A special artist's book highlights the ideological writings and roots of the exhibition, paired with additional photos from the area.

About the artist:  Jay Youngdahl, a resident of St. Petersburg, lives on Masters Bayou. He is an artist who also practices civil rights and union law in the South. Through text, collage, and photography his art is participatory action art, as he makes art around and with the workers whom he represents and the locations in which he works and lives. He received an MFA at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and a Master of Divinity at Harvard. He writes, “I believe in the connection between beauty and justice. I use my art to consider life around us, focusing on aspects and connections we may not naturally perceive, especially in our more 'common' endeavors.” www.jayyoungdahl.art
Fabrication Exploration
December 14 through December 18, 2021

An exhibition of student work from the fall 2021 elective course ELEC 290X: Introduction to Digital Fabrication, led by adjunct faculty Noah Coleman, Makerspace Manager and Technician. Featuring projects by: Renan Anan, Meghna Anil, Reanna DeVarennes, Artsiom Karankevich, Jess Lewis, Mark Mohan, Elijah Nuriddin, Stella Pappi, Mariel Rivelsrud, Susan Saulnier, Breck Stenson, Wren Sullivan, Matthew Willetto
First Impressions: Broadsides and Books of Chance
December 11, 2019 through January 17, 2020
Reception: Wednesday, December 11, 2019, 11:30 a.m. - 12:30 p.m.

An exhibition of student work from the fall 2019 elective course ELEC 220: Intro to Letterpress, led by adjunct faculty Bridget Elmer, Coordinator of the Letterpress and Book Arts Center. Featuring projects by Caio Arias Nogueria, Kelly Campbell, Louise Fung, Minna Gannon, Holly Greaves Brown, James Harris, Kassidy Hernandez, Lochlainn Kane, Konrad Losiak, Piper McMahon, Rebecca Miranda, Esther Sitver, Valerie Turner, Dannie Wang, and Miranda Williams.
Alisa Hodzic: Slow Process
November 15 through December 6, 2019

An installation of vegetable and fruit papyrus (VF papyrus) structures float, radiate, and perfume the reading room and exhibition spaces of the Special Collections Center. In the hands of Hodzic (Ringling College alumna 2019), organic matter--in this case thinly sliced discarded produce--is first made into translucent paper-like substrates then shaped and dried in a variety of forms. While the process of transforming such water-laden material is indeed a slow one, the resultant sculptural pieces capture a stillness--the seeds, the veins, the symmetries of plant matter still intact--as well as a lightness of their evolution.
A Portrait of the Artist in Late Consumer Capitalism, Pt. 1
assembled by Edwin Utermohlen
February 1 through February 15, 2019
AWARE - A collection of environmentally-conscious books, zines, and posters
Curated by Bea Patarata and the Green Ambassadors for Green Week
February 18 through March 8, 2019

Featuring works from the collection by Julie Chen, Dawn Hachenski, Justseeds Artists’ Cooperative, Sharon McCartney, Barbara Milman, Stephen Sidelinger, Elsi Vassdal Ellis, and Shu-Ju Wang.
Costume Design: Animals in Mythology / Fairytales / Legends / Folk Tales
September 10 through October 22, 2018

ELEC 270 Costume Design: Spring 2018 project led by Film faculty Sheryl Haler. Exhibition includes wearable animal heads and photographs of costumed characters created by students in the class, along with research materials from the Special Collections Center.
COMPENDIA
April 25 through May 25, 2018
Opening Reception: Wednesday, April 25, 2017, 11:30 a.m. - 12:30 p.m.

Publications designed and produced in the Spring 2018 Collaboratory course, Artists' Publications. Featuring the latest release in the Letterpress and Book Arts Artists' Publication Series, URGENT: Missives from the People by Sheryl Oring; as well as independent projects by Ringling College students Grace Arredondo, Leslie Carol, Luke Liscom, Kim Nguyen, and Yaribel Vazquez. The students created work about collections and collecting inspired by their collaboration with artist Sheryl Oring.
Word, Image, Book
January 9 through January 27, 2018
Reception: Thursday, January 25, 2018, 11:30 a.m. - 12:30 p.m.

Student work from the elective class Word, Image, Book. Course led by Graphic Design faculty Joani Spadaro. Featuring projects by: Sarah Bedell, Leslie Carol, Brady Clem, Michael Corey, Mitchell Hoeft, Maddie Ince, and Luke Liscom.
Freedom of the Presses
October 20 through December 2, 2017
Richard and Barbara Basch Gallery and Brizdle-Schoenberg Special Collections Center

Freedom of the Presses is a collaborative, multi-site exhibition co-curated by Booklyn, Inc. and members of the Ringling College of Art and Design community. The project focuses on the creative and democratic processes of 21st century independent artist's publishing and offers models of empowering and educational art publishing practices.
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The exhibition and reading room at Basch Gallery features artists’ publications at the crossroads of art and social practice from Booklyn, Inc. and the Brizdle-Schoenberg Special Collections Center. Highlights include the Streetopia artists’ book, alternative art fair, and textbook project; performances and publications by Sheryl Oring; and community publishing projects from the multi-generational collective, Mobile Print Power.

A floor-to-ceiling installation at the Special Collections Center shows original prints from the portfolio project Celebrate People’s History/Iraq Veterans Against the War: Ten Years of Fighting for Peace and Justice. The poster series is a joint project of Booklyn Artists Alliance, Civilian-Soldier Alliance, Justseeds Artists’ Cooperative, Iraq Veterans Against the War, and Repetitive Press.

For more information, please see the full schedule of events, including a curators’ panel, book fair, and film screening.
LIMITED EDITION
May 3 through May 18, 2017
 Opening Reception: Wednesday, May 3, 2017, 11:30 a.m. - 12:15 p.m.

An exhibition of artists' publications produced by students at the Letterpress and Book Arts Center, including:
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ELEC 220 Intro to Letterpress
Sarah Albanese, Illustration, 2018; Daniella Apon, Illustration, 2017; Aria Benites, Illustration, 2020; Khoa Duong, Photography & Imaging, 2017; Jose Gayosso, Advertising Design, 2017; Yeji Kim, Illustration, 2018; Kim Nguyen, Motion Design, 2021; Tara Norton, Computer Animation, 2019; Eliza Sturgeon, Illustration, 2018; Sogn Zamrzla, Business of Art & Design, 2017

  ELEC 350 Collaboratory: Artists' Publications
  Peter Barnaba, Advertising Design, 2017; Sarah Lockett, Graphic Design, 2017; Sanjana Sharma, Motion Design, 2019; Chelsea Van Beek, Advertising Design, 2017

Recorded Events

Making Lesbians Visible: Recovering the Social History of the 1990s Lesbian Comics Boom

Friday, September 9, 2022

Special lecture by Margaret Galvan, RBS-Mellon SoFCB Fellow, and Assistant Professor of Visual Rhetoric, Department of English, University of Florida

> Watch the recording online (created by Ringling College's Art Network)
> Link to Margaret Galvan's resource guide to Queer Comics

In the early 1990s, lesbian and bisexual women cartoonists were befriending each other and supporting each other’s professional endeavors, facilitating an unprecedented boom in lesbian comics publishing. Cartoonist Andrea Natalie founded the Lesbian Cartoonists' Network (LCN) in 1990 and started publishing a quarterly newsletter that circulated among an international network of women. The newsletter allowed the women varied ways to connect, which they carried over into their comics-heavy zines where they wrote each other fan letters, spoofed each other's characters, and lovingly reviewed each other's comics. Due to the grassroots, small press nature of these publishing venues, many of these comics are inaccessible today and the women’s important contributions to documenting changing social mores around sexuality and simultaneously celebrating and critiquing lesbian culture has been forgotten. Through archival research in grassroots archives, this talk recovers the social history of this fervent community building.

Margaret Galvan is Assistant Professor of Visual Rhetoric in the Department of English at the University of Florida. Her archivally-informed research examines how visual culture operates within feminist and queer social movements and includes a forthcoming first book, In Visible Archives (University of Minnesota Press). In 2021-2022, she was in residence at the Stanford Humanities Center as the Distinguished Junior External Fellow researching a second book about how communities of LGBTQ cartoonists innovated comics through grassroots formats. Her publications on comics in social movements can be found in journals like American Literature, Archive Journal, Australian Feminist Studies, iNKS, Journal of Lesbian Studies, and WSQ.

Organized by Janelle Rebel, RBS-Mellon SoFCB Fellow. Co-sponsored by the Andrew W. Mellon Society of Fellows in Critical Bibliography at Rare Book School and the Brizdle-Schoenberg Special Collections Center and Alfred R. Goldstein Library at Ringling College of Art and Design. The event took place in the Orkin Lecture Hall, 113, in the Alfred R. Goldstein Library.