UA Book Arts Instructor Wins Award

TUSCALOOSA, Ala. — The Minnesota Center for Book Arts presented Sarah Bryant, a book arts instructor in The University of Alabama School of Library and Information Studies, with the MCBA Prize, the first honor to recognize book art from across the field and around the world.

Bryant’s entry, “Biography,” was selected for the award from a pool of 147 submissions that represented 22 nations and all seven continents.

In her artist’s statement, Bryant, an alumna of UA’s Library and Information Studies, said “Biography” is “an examination of the chemical elements in the human body and the roles they play elsewhere in the world. This book grew out of my desire to use the periodic table, our visual method of categorizing every particle of matter in the universe, as a tool for creating a portrait of a human being, the viewer of the book.”

Bryant received an MFA in Book Arts from the University in 2008. Since then, she has taught book arts for the University of Georgia in Cortona, Italy, and she served as the Victor Hammer Fellow for Wells College in New York State. Her books have been collected by major libraries including Cornell University, The New York Public Library, Harvard University and Stanford University, among others.

In 2009, she spent a month in Ireland for a residency at a printmaking studio in Donegal. “It was a strikingly beautiful and isolating area,” Bryant said. “Four miles to the nearest village on a bike, light until 11 p.m., a crazy mountain in the background, bog in the foreground and no one else around.”

Bryant returns to the University as an instructor in the Book Arts Program beginning in the fall 2011 semester.

“Honestly, none of what I have accomplished since studying at UA would have been possible without the education I received there,” she said. “The University of Alabama MFA in the Book Arts program transformed me from someone with a dormant interest in books and book arts into a skilled and active participant in that professional world.”