“It Wasn’t Little Rock” was the response that black students in Arlington, Virginia often gave when asked about their experiences in the newly racially desegregated public schools of the 1960s. It was short-hand for we might have problems but we are not being subjected to the unspeakable hatred that was showered on black students when they integrated Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas in 1957. White students spat on, beat up, yelled insults, destroyed black student lockers, threw flaming paper wads at them in the bathrooms, and even threw lighted sticks of dynamite at and sprayed acid in the eyes of a female black student. To Arlington students, Central High in Little Rock provided the standard for what they might face when integrating their county’s formerly all white schools.

Often made in collaboration, artists' books may require the combined expertise of bookbinders, printers, papermakers, photographers, illustrators, calligraphers, etc. Traditional materials (such as wood, paper and cloth) or non-traditional materials (plexiglass, mylar, etc.) may be utilized.  As technology advances, all methods of printing--from photocopier to letterpress to digital, are being explored as new forms of the book continue to evolve.

To find Artists’ Books in the collection, search SouthernSearch or click here to browse a list of Artists' Books at Buley Library.

  

This book was built by ten women paper architects. Their tools were knives and bone folders, and four Vandercook printing presses."

"Sanctus Sonorensis is a book of border ‘beatitudes’. This work comments on the complicated attitudes of Americans on illegal immigration from Mexico. The cover shows a photograph of the area of Southern Arizona which is the most active in terms of migration across the Sonoran desert, and where thousands have lost their lives in the deadly desert heat. ..."
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