Art Opening in Library 12/7

On December 7th at 5:30 pm, I went to an art opening in the library. This was about Fore-edge Painting of books. Fore-edge painting is when the author, or someone else, of a book paints the edge of the book something that has to do with the book itself. In an Art History class at Loyola, students worked all semester to work on this project. They each did research on books that already had fore-edge painting and learned about the history of fore-edge painting. They learned about how people would do this as an art. Often times, the paintings on the fore-edge of the books would be landscape paintings. These paintings had to be displayed in a very specific way. The book holders displayed the books in a way that allowed the fore-edge paintings to be shown and presented.

The students from Loyola worked alongside some people at John's Hopkins. One man from John's Hopkins volunteered to make individualized book holders for each of the fore edge painting books that the students at Loyola had. This took a lot of time because each book was a different size, and each book required the things holding the books up to be a different height, and in a different way. In some casings, the books are being held vertically, while others are being held horizontally.

Each student had to research one book, and through the research done on this book, they had to paint a fore-edge painting for that book. Their paintings had to relate to the book and what the book was about in some way. Many of the students did landscape paintings, and many of the students did paintings that related to them and their interests. Each student talked about how much detail had to go into each painting, and they recognized the artists of the old fore-edge painting books as talented and dedicated.