Barry Moser with James Baldwin, Leonard Baskin, E.M. Beekman, Luna Goldberg, Emma Elizabeth Hall, Sarah Horowitz, Jasper Johns, Daniel Kelm, Michael Kuch, Art Larson, Herman Melville, Allen Mandelbaum, Harold McGrath, David Jonathan Ross, Adam Rubinstein, Yvette Rutledge, Meg Sanders, Jericha Senyak, Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, Rachel Sietz, and Vance Studley
Curated by Amy Halliday and Jocelyn Edens
June 3—September 30, 2016
Originally from Chattanooga, Tennessee, booksmith Barry Moser has taught in the Pioneer Valley of Western Massachusetts for almost 50 years. From the Williston Northampton School in Easthampton where he set up his first press, to his current role as Professor in Residence and Printer to the College at Smith College, Moser’s pedagogy and practice are deeply interleaved.
This exhibition takes Moser’s college book arts syllabus as a conceptual starting point, presenting a range of formal “problems,” a series of materials and tools, and a selection of recommended reading. Moser’s pedagogy emerges as distinctly heuristic: learning is kindled by trial and error, shaped by perseverance, and expanded in new aesthetic and intellectual contexts.
The majority of the works on view are part of Hampshire College’s newly-acquired Vance Studley Collection, which reflects Moser’s long-term collaboration with printer and typographer Vance Studley. Throughout the exhibition, which includes work by Moser’s students and Hampshire alumni, the book arts emerge as a collaborative and collegial practice of teaching, learning, and mentorship.
