Professor Melissa Kuperminc is a life-long book lover. As a child, she enjoyed visiting the Margate City Public Library in Margarte City, NJ, a two-room Tudor cottage where she remembers curling up in a shaft of sunlight, reading for hours. That's where she learned to treasure all facets of the reading experience: the discovery of a book, its cover design, chosen typeface, the feel of the paper, and the contents themselves.

The SCAD Atlanta graphic design professor's selection of beloved books includes two new ones she has been saving for winter break.

Diane Ackerman, A Natural History of the Senses (Vintage, 1990): "Ackerman is a poet, and this is a beautifully written book and a mesmerizing investigation of the five senses. Her writing is rooted in science and driven by curiosity. I'm on my fourth copy of this book, having pushed it into the hands of interested students who didn't want to let it go."

Roland Barthes, Camera Lucida: Reflections on Photography (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1981): "I had to read a good bit of Barthes in graduate school seminars, and often found it tough but rewarding reading. This slender book was written after the death of Barthes' mother, and near the end of his life. It's a moving meditation on how and why photography is meaningful."

Simon Garfield, Just My Type: A Book about Fonts (Gotham, 2011): "Typography is one of my passions. Letterforms have personality, character, provenance, and a surprisingly rich history. Garfield reminds me of a sort of British Malcolm Gladwell, and this book about the history and mysteries of letters is a fascinating joy."

Johannes Itten, The Art of Color: The Subjective Experience and Objective Rationale of Color (Van Nostrand Reinhold, 1973): "Itten was a legendary master professor in the Weimar Bauhaus. Between 1919 and 1922, he taught at the Bauhaus, developing the required and innovative preliminary course which still influences art school foundations classes to this day. This big book taught me just about everything I know about color, and let me see it in a new way."

Rebecca Solnit, Hope in the Dark: Untold Histories, Wild Possibilities (Haymarket Books, 2016): "This slender book has become even more relevant over time. It shows that while social change happens along an unpredictable path, there are reasons for hope that can power the fight for social justice. Solnit is one of the great writers and thinkers of our time, and this is a great introduction to her work."

Alice Yin Cheng, This is What Democracy Looked Like: A Visual History of the Printed Ballot (Princeton Architectural Press, 2020): "This is the first illustrated history of US printed ballot design, featuring essays on the ballot as well as a visual history of ballot design in the 19th and early 20th century."

Peter Mendelsund and David J. Alworth, The Look of the Book: Jackets, Covers & Art at the Edges of Literature (Ten Speed Press, 2020): "This gorgeous book about book cover design "examines art at the edges of literature through notable covers and the stories behind them," according to the authors. I haven't gotten to this one or the book on ballots yet, but that's part of the joy of the holiday season...curling up with a good book!"

Eric Ross (M. Arch, 2010; B.F.A., architecture, 2009) is an award-winning director at William McDonough + Partners in Charlottesville, Virginia. His work at WM+P focuses on the integration of Cradle to Cradle thinking at all levels of a project, embodying regenerative design and development principles across scale and typology.

Eric's Fall 2020 Alumni Atelier project, A Return to Zero, addresses mass timber, the building material that is a critical element in the fight for carbon positive buildings. A collaborative endeavor with contributions from mass timber manufacturer Nordic Structures, A Return to Zero will serve as a landmark case study for carbon positive architecture.

Rendering excerpted from A Return To Zero: A Case Study Report, Eric Ross, AIA, 2020.

Eric Ross:

Through deep research, the building industry has set targets to reduce carbon emissions substantially in the next 10 years, and ultimately reach zero by 2050. Larger companies have embraced the challenge internally rather than waiting on the public sector and politicians to lead. The housing industry continues to lags behind because it deals with the most economic hurdles.

My idea is: How can we take the work we're doing for major companies and distill it into case study house projects that can serve as roadmaps for architects and builders?

We've been using a new building material called mass timber in lieu of concrete or steel which both have pretty substantial carbon footprints. The test case house is meant to employ mass timber as much as possible, as well as prefabrication techniques which reduce on-site waste. It's a big vision thing. For Bill McDonough, my boss, it's something he's been pushing for 30 plus years. My Alumni Atelier project is a chance to distill it all down as a case study.

For me, this journey began about fifteen years ago. I had been in the Army and decided I wanted to study architecture. My sister living in Hilton Head recommended checking out SCAD. I immediately started the five-year program. Since I was a little bit older, I was working full time while going to SCAD and by the time I started that fifth year, I was completing my thesis and at the same time transitioning into a real architecture profession role, doing high-end architecture including 3D modeling that I learned in at SCAD. It was a nice dovetail.

Bill McDonough and Michael Braungart's book Cradle To Cradle: Remaking the Way We Make Things (North Point Press, 2002 was required reading for my first SCAD studio project with professor Tim Woods. This ethos of designing beautiful, compelling architecture with a strong, sustainable ethos was instilled early on at SCAD. Now, at WM+P, I've worked on five mass timber projects, building on this breadth of knowledge.

With these projects, we can do pretty great photorealistic renderings throughout the process. There are VR walkthroughs and prototype 3D printed models and laser cut models, analogous to what a studio project might produce in the end, but with a with a lot more real world thought and input.

Returning to SCAD for Alumni Atelier project has been wonderful. I've enjoyed speaking directly with students, taking them on a virtual walk-through of my work space, answering questions, and sharing my project in progress. I appreciate the opportunity to pay it forward.

The SCAD Alumni Atelier, conceived and endowed by SCAD President and Founder Paula Wallace, enriches the creative and professional endeavors of distinguished SCAD graduates.

Learn more about the program here.

Artist and manga devotee D.J. Kirkland-DeJesus (B.F.A., sequential art, 2009) is the co-creator with writer Daniel Barnes of the hit graphic novel The Black Mage (Oni Press, 2019). A native of Charlotte, NC, Kirkland is committed to raising the profile of Black and LGBTQ artists and storytellers.

"There are not a lot of Black queer persons in our industry," D.J. says. "If I can be an example for even one other kid, then I've succeeded."

The Black Mage is a celebration of diversity and a condemnation of small mindedness. The main character, Tom Token, deals with the same issues marginalized children face growing up in their communities on a daily basis. Bullying. Stereotypes. Ignorance. Hate.

In addition to The Black Mage, D.J. has illustrated Oni Press titles including Dream Daddy (Oni Press, 2019) and Aggretsuko (Oni Press, 2020). D.J. also works at Viz Media as a digital publishing production assistant, where he ensures the quality of the firm's anime shows before release.

D.J. Kirkland-DeJesus:

I found my love of art at an early age. My mom and dad worked hard to give me the typical suburban childhood. Sometimes that meant I would be left with a box of crayons, reams of printing paper, and Sailor Moon cartoons to keep me occupied until dinner was ready. I loved drawing, and that turned into a love for storytelling.

My first art teacher was my friend's mom, Mrs. Pittman. She was a local artist in Charlotte who hosted art classes for kids in the neighborhood. I was always coming home with little projects for my mom to hang up. When I was 13 my parents put me in more formal drawing classes.

I grew up watching anime, believing one day I would be the one creating the magic, but I wasn't sure how to get there. When I first heard about SCAD, I learned they offered programs for both sequential art and animation. Since I wanted to make both cartoons and comics. I knew I wanted to go to SCAD.

Professor John Larison (M.F.A., sequential art, 1998) single-handedly defined my sequential art experience at SCAD. I love him with every piece of my being. He pushed me to be my best, and was a huge advocate for me. In quarters when I didn't have classes with him, I would hang out with him during his office hours. Most importantly, he helped me showcase my work to ONI Press when editors from ONI visited SCAD to give guest critiques of student portfolios.

In 2015, I was at PAX West in Seattle and dropped by the ONI booth. Charlie Chu, their VP of creative and business development, asked: "Are you still interested in comics? We've got an open submission for a book called The Black Mage."

The rest is history, but I wouldn't have gotten that book if I hadn't already met Charlie at SCAD. Daniel and I are now looking to continue the story of The Black Mage and take it from the page to the screen. I envision a kid in his house, crayons splayed out across the table, drawing Tom Token the way I drew Sailor Moon, and telling his parents, "I am going to do this when I grow up."

www.djkirkland.com

"I reject the idea of the artist being dependent on mystic inspiration," says Gonzalo Hernandez (M.A., painting, 2018; M.F.A., fibers, 2019). "The idea I'm pushing is that everyone is an artist and this is a job."

The Peruvian multi-disciplinarian stands in the light-dappled Alumni Gallery of the SCAD Museum of Art on a brisk autumn morning. Behind him, two drill-wielding workers in backwards baseball caps affix one of his new works to a wall. While installing Hernandez's exhibition, their actions emphasize his point.

One wall exposes the gallery's pink innards, which will be covered when the installation is complete. Except a closer look reveals…it is the work itself, titled PPP. Hernandez has created a floor-to-ceiling vinyl simulation of Owens Corning Energy-Saving Insulation with its familiar Pink Panther logo, adding subtle adornments to the repeat pattern, including his web address and an enigmatic emoji ):).

"I was researching symbols and that's how I found the title of the show," Hernandez explains. "The closed parenthesis followed by a colon and another closed parenthesis is both a sad face and a happy face. The emoji represents mixed emotions, and that's how I feel right now — having my first museum show at SCAD MOA is a big step for me, while the whole world is dying!"

The artist is building himself as he goes. What might sound like fatalism in conversation inspires intrigue in person. In and Out, a photographic diptych of a shopping list written in Spanish on the back of a fist, carries implications about sustenance and consumption in a Corona-stricken year when even the supermarket can seem unsafe.

Gonzalo Hernandez, "In" (left) and "Out" (right), photographic prints, 40" x 40" each, 2020.

A video piece, 45", depicts Gonzalo wielding an advertising board featuring the word "SUCCESS" as he stands in different locations: an art fair, a soccer match, Damien Hirst's studio, a political rally, Machu Pichu. There is no sign twirling, the artist's stoicism questioning notions of location, reward, and who's doing the real work to make success possible.

In a moment of uncertainty and upheaval, Hernandez has embraced possibility. Shortly before the opening of his SCAD MOA show, he completed a monthlong residency with the nonprofit Erie Artists & Culture in Pennsylvania, where he collaborated with a piñata maker and a group of local musicians. In March, he and his wife Pierina Sanchez (M.U.D., urban design, 2019) launched ABRIR, an online gallery featuring an international network of artists including Leia Genis (B.F.A., painting, 2019; B.F.A., sculpture, 2019) and beloved painting professor Todd Schroeder.

"Todd is one of my big influences," Gonzalo says, nodding towards ):) (gracias Todd), a painting of the titular emoji on a sheet of Tyvek paper, a brand favored by Schroeder in his own work. "The English word ‘tribute' is not quite right," Gonzalo clarifies. "It's something closer to what we say in Spanish, homenaje."

Straddling cultures and countries, exploring art as language: Gonzalo Hernandez is on the job.

):) is on view through Sunday, January 24, 2021.

The exhibition is curated by Ben Tollefson.

"I'm interested in how the attitude of humans is affected by design," says Daniela Duarte (B.F.A., furniture design, 2020). "Different shapes and textures call to us in a thousand different ways, and designers have to be aware of the emotions we are evoking when we create our pieces."

Duarte recently won the Student Award at the International Society of Furniture Designers 2020 Pinnacle Awards for CURVA, a chair she designed in her senior studio class. The Pinnacle Awards recognize excellence, innovation, and originality in furniture design, and ISFD judges called CURVA "exactly the type of product that consumers are looking for."

Today, Daniela is working at 5 SÓLIDOS in Medellin, Columbia. She took time to discuss her process, path, and passion for producing prepossessing décor.

Daniela Duarte:

As I worked on my senior collection, I was focused on making sure I created a positive feeling for the consumer. My concept was based around creating a sense of belonging. I wanted to design a memorable product and create an experience for the user well beyond just a chair.

CURVA was the first element and ultimately the catalyst for my senior project. The entire year was dedicated to creating a collection that personified my philosophy and spoke to who I am as a designer.

I am interested in the concept of emotional design, and have studied the works of Don Norman to understand how designers can make deeper connections with users through their products. First, I spent a lot of time on the shape of the chair itself. I found that the interlocking components created a sense of calm and peace with my fellow designers.

I tried a variety of shapes, and interlocking connections, then tested those designs with my classmates to understand what emotions came forth with each new design. I found that shapes that were tilting created stress and nervousness. Shapes that were perfectly interlocking or melting into one another were "satisfying" and created a sense of "belonging."

The idea of belonging drove the remainder of the product experience. The arms are shaped to look like a hug, and the monochromatic colors help the chair create a sense of harmony. The wood is ash, and I love how it works with the gray of the fabric.

From there, I focused on making sure the chair performed well. Would it matter if the chair looked great but you never sat in it? I wanted the product to be both memorable and invisible. Obviously, that is a slight paradox, but good design enhances our life seamlessly. 

Professor Fred Spector encouraged me to submit my design to the competition. He felt that I had a good chance of winning, and was very encouraging throughout the process. I was shocked when I won and of course very happy I listened to him.

My experience at SCAD has helped shape me into the designer I am today. When I was looking at universities, I had a teacher, Paola Caicedo (B.F.A., fashion, 1997), who'd attended SCAD and loved it. She encouraged me to come to Savannah since I too wanted to study industrial design. I fell in love with furniture design once I got here.

The furniture design department is a really tight-knit community and the professors are amazing. I was able to design, choose patterns and fabrics, and build life-long pieces for people to enjoy. I loved all of it. I hope to open my own studio in the future, and am learning and growing as much as I can until then.

Learn more about SCAD furniture design.

"Thirty-two million Americans experience food allergies, and forty percent of children with food allergies experience life-threatening reactions," explains Krysta Silva (B.F.A., advertising). Speaking on behalf of her Shark Tank of Wellness award-winning team, Silva emphasized the need for new tools to help individuals stay safe and better understand what is in their food.

Krysta collaborated with fellow SCAD Atlanta students Daranie Mor (B.F.A., advertising) and Megan Ip (B.F.A., advertising, 2020) to create Samii, a set of portable, rechargeable utensils that detect allergenic proteins in food. Their concept was chosen from over 130 submissions from 36 countries as the first-place winner at the 2020 Global Wellness Summit in Palm Beach, Florida.

Today, Krysta and her team are working with investors to get Samii to a table near you.

Krysta Silva:

Samii started as a class project for ADBR 305: Brand Innovation: From Physical to Virtual (ADBR 305). Professor Misra-Deshpande put it plainly: "Your assignment is to win the Shark Tank of Wellness competition." Our team set out with that goal in mind.

First, we researched the wellness industry and looked for white space to fill in. None of us had food allergies, but we all knew people struggling with this issue and thought it would be a meaningful project. We were shocked to see the real need for research and tools. A few of the statics were jaw dropping:

• 220 million people are affected globally by food allergies.
• Food allergies cost the U.S. economy $24.8 billion annually.
• Every three minutes there is an E.R. visit from induced anaphylaxis.
• Over 50% of adults report developing a food allergy after the age of 18.
• The cost of epinephrine increased 514% from 2001-2016.

Clearly something needs to be done, and the current rate of funding for research is woefully behind the needs of those suffering.

One of the largest needs is more detailed and accurate testing of food. Current allergen scanners require users to separate a portion of their food to be tested. But what if the selection you portioned off was safe, but the next bite was contaminated? We can't expect diners to test every bite this way.

That is why Samii could be so revolutionary. It works in coordination with the app to test each bite as you eat it, bringing peace of mind to the eater and drastically lowering the numbers of individuals who will need emergency medical attention. By simply reversing the current way of testing food, we will change the entire industry for the better. We are now in discussions with a tech start-up that is interested in the possibilities ahead.

When I first applied to SCAD, I thought I wanted to study fashion design. I spent a lot of time researching what university was right for me. SCAD was absolutely the correct choice. Since making the decision to major in advertising, I've found my passion for product design. I can't imagine doing anything else.

Visit Krysta Silva!

Statistics sourced from End Allergies Together (EAT).

"I believe museums should drive social change," says Devon Vander Voort (B.F.A., art history). "All my work is aligned in some way with that mission." A museum studies minor, Vander Voort presented her project "An American Tail Immigration Brochure" at this year's Southeastern Museums Conference, as part of the Student Work in Museums (SWIM) Awards.

The project sprang from MUSM 302: Museum Curation and Collection Management, a class taught by art history professor Christine Neal. Conducted in collaboration with Special Collections librarian Sauda Mitchell, the class accessed the Don Bluth Collection of Animation at the Jen Library, as students designed education materials for hypothetical museum exhibitions.

Museums have been a thread through Vander Voort's life, from her time as a high school student with the Teen Arts Council at Everson Museum in Syracuse, NY, to her current work as a docent and exhibition planner at the Savannah African Art Museum alongside executive director and SCAD alumna Billie Stultz (B.F.A., art history, 2016). "My dream is to someday be director of the National Museum of Women in the Arts," says Devon. She's on her way.

Devon Vander Voort:

As part of my museum studies minor, I took MUSM 301: Museum Leadership in fall 2019 with Dr. Carr. Then I spent a quarter in Lacoste, where I took ARTH 240: Treasures of Provence, which I loved. When I returned to Savannah for spring quarter this year, SCAD had transitioned to virtual learning as I began MUSM 302: Curatorial Practices with Professor Neal.

One thing instilled in me during Museum Leadership is that museums have to reflect a community's needs. I was thinking about that as I began Curatorial Practices. When Professor Neal said we were going to be using the Bluth Collection, I realized how little I knew about the art of animation. Then I saw that one of the films Don Bluth made was An American Tail, which is an immigration story. Immigration affects people's lives, and I began thinking how I could align my values and my work for this class.

As Americans we have had this idea that we welcome people from other places. Then we see the border crisis on the news and it doesn't make any sense. I created the brochure to address the themes of immigration in the movie, and juxtapose them with the current border crisis. The brochure includes a card with information on what to do if you're approached by law enforcement about your immigration status.

In An American Tail we see the Statue of Liberty, and we see U.S. currency, and Fievel the mouse seeing his face reflected in the face of the coin. My proposed exhibition would include the drawings and animation cells from SCAD Special Collections, a space where the movie's playing, and a display about the history of America's first immigration center, Castle Garden. Museumgoers would have a chance to learn about their own ancestors, and see how we're all connected.

I was born in India and adopted by my mom. I grew up in a small suburb outside Syracuse, but we lived abroad for a few years, and we traveled a lot. My mother gave me those experiences, which influenced my world view and my project. I've been afforded an awesome life and have to do something with it to help other people. I plan to achieve that through working at museums, and making them places of inclusion, accessible to the communities they serve.

Learn more about the Don Bluth Collection of Animation.

www.devonvandervoort.com

"I was holding a six pack of novelty Valentine's Day underwear at Walgreens and I thought, ‘I need to fix this'," says Eleanor Turner (B.F.A., fashion, 2008). "While packing last minute for a business trip, I realized I had no clean underwear. I went to the only store that was open and left with these hideous heart-covered underpants."

Turner saw the need for change. Now, assisted by the SCADpro Fund, the entrepreneur and designer's new venture The Big Favorite is redefining the business of underwear.

"People care about the companies they support, and how those companies operate on a global scale," Turner say. "Consumers want quality, comfort, and style, and they also want to know that the places they shop are mindful of their impact on the planet. That is why I started a company that is going to recycle underwear."

As part of SCAD's Guests and Gusto lecture series, Eleanor shared her vision with future designers.

Eleanor Turner:

The first piece of advice I give any entrepreneur is, "If you are going to fail, fail on somebody else's dime." When the company is yours, every decision matters. Where to locate, who to work with, how many hangers do you need? Every decision costs money, and when you first start out, money is tight.

Before I co-founded my first company, Argent, I worked at some of the biggest fashion houses in New York. Each stop taught me something new and prepared me for my own launch. My time at Tommy Hilfiger taught me the importance of the runway show to our marketing strategy. While at Tory Burch I learned how to work with wholesalers, and when I designed for J. Crew, I learned how to fail at a big scale.

Getting to make mistakes early in my career allowed me the ability to learn how to recover, re-prioritize, and not repeat them when my name was on the door.

I did not know that I was an entrepreneur at heart when I first got to SCAD. That changed one day when I found an old button in the garage when I was home my junior year.

It read "The Big Favorite." I asked my dad what it was and he told me my great-grandfather started a clothing business in the 1930s. From there I was hooked. I thought about his company and how I could follow in those footsteps. Today, I stand here, launching my second company, wiser and more prepared, believing the world is going to embrace recycled undergarments.

Over $500 million of garments is discarded every year, and more than 11 million pounds of undergarments are sent to landfills daily. I felt it was time for a change and we are making that change at The Big Favorite. We are going to use 100% pima cotton to make our undershirts and underwear to eliminate plastic particles. When our users are finished wearing these items, we will collect and aggregate the clothes, turning them back into new yarn, creating new garments.

Our goal is simple: reduce waste, have an eco-friendly supply chain, and do it from the bottom up.

Join The Big Favorite revolution.

Originally from Caracas, Venezuela, Diego Cardenas (M.F.A., painting) was 13 years old when he began dabbling in graffiti. A decade later, the artist known as "lé dieguê" is a popular muralist and a featured artist for SCAD Open Studio Fall 2020, the virtual event taking place this Friday through Sunday, Nov. 13-15. His color field explorations, in the tradition of chromatic pioneer and SCAD deFINE art 2017 honoree Carlos Cruz-Diez, can light up a mood, a city, or the soul of a people. Don't underestimate the power of the work.

Diego Cardenas:

My art is largely abstract, though I also make representational work. I'm currently in Kentucky, painting a mural at a university inside a science building, of fish native to that region. I've been blessed to be able to paint commissions and murals for people. I also draw, though drawing isn't my major body of work, I try to keep the pencil moving.

My process begins on my computer in Abode Illustrator. The software helps me set measurements for each section of my work and then I mark it off. I try not to use graphite because it tends to show through spray paint. I make little dots to guide me and then I use masking tape to create clean lines. It's a little tricky because I paint, then move the tape, and paint again, which takes a lot of patience.

My painting "Angular Perception 13" uses color and lines to change how you perceive the size of aspects of the work. I strive for pristine lines, but I stop short of being a perfectionist. That comes from working outside, where I can't control whatever is floating around in the air that winds up sticking to the surface. When paint bleeds underneath a line, I might go back later and touch it up, or I might like the effect.

I don't consider myself a pioneer. A lot of people have laid the foundations for this work. I'm very close to the work of Carlos Cruz-Diez. He is one of the main references for what I do and how I do it. I interned at both his Articruz studios, the one in Panama City and at Atelier Cruz-Diez in Paris. It was sad when he passed away [in 2019, at age 95] though his work and chromatic investigations survive, and what he achieved as an artist from Venezuela around the world.

What's happening in Venezuela is on my mind all the time. I'm always cheering for my people. In 2018, I started a non-profit called CRÜ with two friends, Hugo Pah Carrasco and Andres Pri Martinez, where we go and paint in poor communities in Venezuela. We create colorful murals to cover old propaganda. You start to paint and you have 30 or 40 kids around you in an instant, and they want to paint too. We've made works for auction that are used to pay for materials to create courses for young people to learn to draw and paint.

I love natural light. Living in Savannah, I'm really interested in what I call the sub-spectrum. I'm always taking pictures. I use software to match the colors of my paint to the colors I see in my photos. From that, I create a limited palette and put color properties together and start playing. I've been studying a book by Faber Birren called Color & Human Response (Van Nostrand Reinhold Co., 1978) about how we perceive color and react to it. If you see someone wearing certain colors it will make you more likely to say hello.

I'm not trying to paint specific feelings. How you feel about the work is up to you, but I want my work to be a tool that will help the viewer be a little more sensitive, to open up awareness and change the way you see things later on.

Diego Cardenas (lé dieguê), “Composición a Malevich,” oil on canvas, spray paint, latex, and varnish on wood, 48”96”, 2020.

Photo of lé dieguê by Luis Ramirez @luisasphotographer.

Follow Diego Cardenas on Instagram here.

"Books about books are my favorite," says Teresa Burk (M.A., historic preservation, 2016). As head librarian, SCAD Atlanta, Burk is in her element. The library, located in the university's main academic building at 1600 Peachtree, offers students an abundant and growing catalog of books, periodicals and visual resources. It's also home to Atlanta Print Collection and Artists' Book Collection, two teaching collections that Burk uses to facilitate student learning experiences complementary to classroom curricula. "Part of the instruction I do is referring students to books about artists' books," she explains.

Here are a few Burk picks, all of them in SCAD Libraries:

Andrew Roth, Philip E. Aarons, and Claire Lehmann, eds., Artists Who Make Books (Phaidon, 2017): "The SCAD Atlanta library has an incredible collection of artists' books. Numbering 2,300 volumes, it is one of the largest in the southeast. We have deep holdings in work from the 1960s and 1970s and from Atlanta's artist-run Nexus Press. We continue to build on the collection, and a point of pride is the student work we collect during the annual student artists' book competition. This book is a great place to start exploring the history of artists' books—you'll find many of the artists mentioned here in our library collection."

Jeff Brouws, Wendy Burton, and Hermann Zschiegner, eds., Various Small Books (MIT Press, 2013): "This book is a tribute to the artist Ed Ruscha. Ruscha is sometimes called the godfather of artists' books because of the small, photo-based books he made in the 1960s and '70s. Those books are highly collectable and we are fortunate to have some of them in the SCAD Libraries. This book shows the impact they had on other artists. It's also about looking and noticing what is interesting in the often-mundane world around you."

Martin Parr and Gerry Badger, The Photobook: A History (Phaidon, vol.1 2004, vol.2 2006, vol.3 2014): "This three-volume set about the history of the photobook brings together an incredible range of material. Parr and Badger discuss the photobook as propaganda, the stream-of-consciousness photobook, the artists' photobook, the company photobook, the protest photobook, and the identity photobook. This set is indispensable inspiration for photography students and all students involved in telling stories with pictures."

Sina Najafi (foreword), Curiosity and Method: Ten Years of Cabinet Magazine (Cabinet Books, 2012): "This is a book about a magazine in the form of an encyclopedia. In other words, not your average reference book. What I love is the range of topics covered–from animal architecture to synesthesia–things I find myself wanting to know more about. Because Cabinet magazine aims to 'encourage a new sense of curiosity,' this book is perfect for artists, designers and creatives. We also have the magazine available in the Atlanta Library."

Fleur Cowels, ed., The Best of Flair (Rizzoli, 2014): "Recently I was working with a graphic design class researching unusual publication design. We looked at some artists' books and contemporary, collectible magazines and when we got to Flair...yes! Goldmine. Flair was a short-lived (1950-51), innovative, lavishly produced magazine famous for its die-cut covers and superb coverage of the arts. You know a magazine that only lasted a year is special if a deluxe book about it has a third edition. We have some original issues of Flair in the special collections and several copies of this book in the SCAD Libraries."

Jane Jacobs, The Death and Life of Great American Cities (Random House, 2011): "This is the 50th anniversary edition of an influential and poetic book about the city, originally published in 1961. Jane Jacobs approaches cities from a humanistic perspective and writes about the ballet of street-life. I was introduced to Jacob's writing and activism during my graduate work in preservation studies here at SCAD. Her perspective helped me look at my surroundings with fresh eyes, not unlike Ed Ruscha's photobooks. I love books that prompt you to take another look, and consider another angle."

Teresa invites you to browse the Artist’s Book Collection.