News Release

Book Arts Exhibit by Sarah Nicholls Opens January 27 at the Jamaica Bay Wildlife Refuge

Date: January 23, 2018
Contact: Daphne Yun, 718-815-3651

An exhibit of book arts, Brain Washing from Phone Towers, by Sarah Nicholls will open Saturday, January 27 at 2 PM at the Jamaica Bay Wildlife Refuge Gallery.

Sarah Nicholls is a book maker—but she doesn’t take bets. She works in the medium of Book Arts, an interdisciplinary form of contemporary art that capitalizes on the history and craft found in centuries of bookmaking. The processes involved include the creation of linocuts or engravings, the setting of metal type by hand, printing, and bookbinding.

This show celebrates the completion of a series of three pamphlets telling the story of Jamaica Bay, which Nicholls published in the spring, summer, and winter of 2017. The first, Still Life with Oysters, Bottles, and Hooves, examines the history of Barren Island, Floyd Bennett Field, and Dead Horse Bay. The second, Flyway, concerns the ecology of Jamaica Bay, and tells the story of salt marshes, horseshoe crabs, shorebirds, ospreys and more. We will be celebrating the completion of the Jamaica Bay series when the final work, Intertidal, which tells the story of the community of Broad Channel, was completed in December.

Nicholls is a visual artist who in her words, “makes pictures with language, books with pictures, images with type, and animations with words.” For twelve years, she ran the studio programs at the Center for Book Arts in NYC, organizing classes, public programs, readings, and talks, coordinating publications, running residency programs, and teaching interns. She teaches book arts and letterpress at Pratt Institute and Parsons School of Design.

The Jamaica Bay Pamphleteering Project was sponsored, in part, by the Greater New York Arts Development Fund of the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, administered by the Brooklyn Arts Council. as well as the Puffin Foundation.