Join us as artist Barbara Page presents her newly published book, Book Marks: An Artist’s Card Catalog: Notes from the Library of My Mind. Barbara will discuss the inspirations behind decades of art creation and her work process. Focusing on two major projects—one, a massive multi-part museum installation and the other, an ongoing project comprised of hundreds of small artworks that fit in a two-drawer library card case—she will describe how a small idea can spark a complicated work that will take years to complete and, in the process, be mightily transformed.

In 2008, Barbara began illustrating library check-out cards with words and pictures, creating an ongoing pictorial survey of her reading history. Housed in a small wooden card catalog case, these artworks, measuring 3 by 5 inches, are filed according to the year she read the book.

The project now consists of more than 1,000 cards, 430 of which are reproduced in Book Marks: An Artist’s Card Catalog (Bauer and Dean Publishers, 2021). The book was awarded “Best of Show” at the 2022 international exhibit Art of the Book organized by the Rochester Central Library.

Learning to fly was the catalyst for Barbara Page’s career as an artist. After earning her pilot’s license, she took up painting and received her MFA from Cornell University. Many of her artworks are from an aerial perspective, and she has a strong interest in exploring different disciplines and recasting them in time-based visual sequences. The Museum of the Earth, in Ithaca, New York, was designed around her series of 544 bas-relief paintings depicting the history of life. Her love affair with printed matter led to the Book Marks project, an ongoing pictorial survey of her reading history. Book Marks has been displayed at the Center for Book Arts in New York City as well as galleries and libraries around the country. Barbara is a fellow of the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts and was artist-in-residence at the Golden Foundation.