Megan Adie
Megan Adie is a book artist and letterpress printer originally from California. She received a Bachelor's Degree in Book Arts from the University of California, Santa Barbara, and taught at the Academy of Art University and the Center for the Book in San Francisco. Her career as a musician, specializing in historical performance practice, brought her first to Basel, Switzerland, and most recently to Copenhagen, Denmark. |
Megan publishes books and prints from her shop in Copenhagen, the first ever physical location of Aviary Press, and organizes printmaking residencies in Basel, at Druckwerk, where she has printed since 2010. Her books can be found in libraries and private collections in both North America and Europe.
A Closed System: Designing a Binding for the Ark First Edition
My proposal is to describe the "closed system" binding that I designed, the first of its kind that I'm aware of, with two removable spines and, consequently, two front covers. The binding was created for a book publishing the first edition of two texts, one by Paul Auster and one by Siri Hustvedt. The texts are thematically related, but quite different in the way they handle the content. Given the stature of the writers and the dialogue between the two texts, I wished to remove any hierarchy from the way that they would be presented. I therefore designed a binding wherein neither writer would receive top billing, as the book has two fronts.
I propose to show images of the book and the printing and binding process, talk about the content as it is related to the binding choices, discuss my inspirations, and read selections from the two texts. The book was commissioned by a small, independent bookstore in Copenhagen called Ark Books. It exists in an edition of 6, with three artist’s proofs.