For Immediate Release
Contact:
Leslie Weddell
(719) 389-6038
Leslie.Weddell@ColoradoCollege.edu
COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. – Sept. 21, 2009 – The Press at Colorado College is celebrating its new home with an open house and lecture on Thursday, Oct. 1.
Renowned curator and book arts scholar Betty Bright will give a lecture titled “Letting Vision Find its Way: From Yesterday to Tomorrow at the Press at CC” at 7 p.m., Thursday, Oct. 1, at the Edith Kinney Gaylord Cornerstone Arts Center Screening Room, 825 N. Cascade Ave., located on the Colorado College campus.
Immediately prior to the lecture, The Press at CC will hold an open house from 6 to 7 p.m. to show off its new home and historic letterpress in Taylor Hall, adjacent to Bemis Hall, 920 N. Cascade Ave. Both events are free and open to the public.
Bright, the former curator and program director for the Minnesota Center for Book Arts, curated the traveling exhibition “The Press at Colorado College: The Pressroom as Classroom.” The 2004 exhibition and illustrated catalogue explored and celebrated collaborative and interdisciplinary teaching methods at The Press at Colorado College over a 20-year period.
She holds a Ph.D. in art history from the University of Minnesota and is the author of “No Longer Innocent: Book Art in America 1960-1980,” a comprehensive history that traces the emergence of book art in the United States during the 1960s and 1970s. As a writer, Bright says she examines “issues that affect the arts as a whole, such as the conflicts (or not) between perceptions of art and craft, as embodied in the artist’s book.” Her ideas will appear as a chapter in the forthcoming anthology, “Extra/ordinary: Craft Culture and Contemporary Art,” to be published by North Carolina: Duke University Press next year.
During the summer, Colorado College moved the collection of fine printing presses and lead type from the basement of Jackson House to The Press’s new home. Five presses, including one built in 1895 and one weighing 3,500 pounds, and more than 500 cases of lead type, were transported across campus in a move that involved removing doors, windows and a concrete retaining wall.
The relocation makes The Press at Colorado College more accessible for disabled persons, as well as campus and community groups such as schoolchildren and those taking printing classes.
The Press at Colorado College, now 31 years old, got its start in the late 1970s when James 
Trissel, a former CC professor of studio art and art history, was enlisted to help transport an old press to the campus. Since then, The Press at Colorado College, recognized as one of Colorado College’s signature programs, has created beautiful fine books, broadsides and ephemera, with some of its publications included in the New York Public Library’s collections of the finest books printed in each decade. To learn more, visit http://www.coloradocollege.edu/library/index.php/press/press-about
The lecture is sponsored by Tutt Library and The Press at Colorado College.
For information, directions or disability accommodation at the event, members of the public may call (719) 389-6607.
About Colorado College
Colorado College is a nationally prominent, four-year liberal arts college that was founded in Colorado Springs in 1874. The college operates on the innovative Block Plan, in which its 1,975 undergraduate students study one course at a time in intensive 3½-week blocks. The college also offers a master of arts in teaching degree. For more information, visit www.ColoradoCollege.edu <http://www.ColoradoCollege.edu>.