Work by artists Elizabeth Sloan, Wil Smiley, and Nick Beymer will be on display at BookPeople beginning in March. Join us for a reception in their honor Friday, March 22, from 4 pm.

Elizabeth Sloan

Elizabeth Sloan’s turn toward Bookarts in the past few years has been inspired by her extensive art background now paired with her MFA in creative writing. 
Her original Bookarts began with imposing her narrative over existing text, and juxtaposing mixed media and a bouillabaisse of ephemera upon the pages of her reinvented book. Her creation “Our M(Others), Ourselves,” embellished over a 1976 edition of Our Bodies, Ourselves, was included in BSU’s Images of Parenting in Visual Culture exhibition; her Lewis-Clark Confluence book was in CAH’s Bookworks invitational exhibit. She is also one of 260 international artists to design three Bookarts for the Al-Mutanabbi Street Project in support of Baghdad’s literary community. This evolving process has led to variations on the theme: some creations embrace just the embellished bookcover; others become interpretations on vintage record album covers (album included); and the search for a less time consuming effort has resulted in beeswax embellished kard,bord. 
All works are ready to hang, or could be set on a table-top plate stand.
Custom orders are welcome by contacting the artist.

Some of Elizabeth’s work can be seen at lizziebzart.com. 

 

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Nick Beymer

I live in Moscow, ID, and work as a commercial bee keeper and photographer. Bee keeping affords me a great deal of travel throughout the year. Even when we're at home in Moscow our day to day takes us all over North Idaho tending to our hives from Lenore on the Clearwater to Athol, north of Coeur d' Alene. But from December to May we follow our bees from here to California and then up to Central Washington as they pollinate first almonds in the winter, then apricots, apples, cherries and pears in the spring. The work is interesting and the photo opportunities even more so. We find ourselves out working at all hours of the day and night and as a result I get to shoot under some really prime conditions. I've shot exclusively black and white for the past five years, but I recently purchased a photo printer (I printed the photos for this show on it) and have gotten really excited by color after a long hiatus.

www.nickbeymerphotography.com

 

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Wil Smiley 

Wil Smiley is a monotype, drypoint and intaglio printmaker from Portland, Oregon. Education includes study at The Evergreen State College, Olympia; and eleven years of summer study with veteran printmaker John Thompson, Missoula, Montana. He has worked as a film animation assistant, museum preparator and studio assistant for muralists and stained glass artists since 1980.

Wil's exhibited work at BookPeople this month is a sampling from two crow series: "Audubon Book of the Dead" and "Free Land Crows." These crow pictures were instigated during a post-hospital recovery in 2011. One note of interest is that most everyone has a crow story.