Last Wednesday through Friday, I was at Millsaps College to give a talk and work on a new project.
This visit was the result of being awarded the Juror’s Prize at the “Bookish” exhibition hosted by Purple Word Center for Book and Paper Arts and on display at the Lewis Art Gallery in Millsaps College in Jackson, Mississippi. Purple Word is run by Millsaps Professor of Art Sandra Murchison. Thank you to Sandra and everyone at Millspas for an incredibly productive visit! I had a great time.
Millsaps College campus is wonderfully small…
One of the few times I actually get to see my work in a group exhibition…
The Lewis Art Gallery is very spacious, on the top floor of the Humanities Building…
Juror Nicole Pietrantoni…a dynamo printmaker!
My work in the exhibition…the show is beautiful! Some really amazing books, as someone who is new to making books, I was taken aback by the quality of the work in the show, and humbled to win this award…
There were books like this, which are more like sculptures than books…amazing!
I was blown away by these books by Ania Gilmore…
Books by Ben Rinehart…
After seeing the exhibition, I went to the printshop and began to work!
Good sized printshop, two intaglio presses and a litho press…
What I wanted to work on the most was their laser cutter…I was on this machine the ENTIRE TIME I was there, cutting linoleum…this was amazing!
The results of my first sample plate…once I knew how this would work, I went back to Photoshop to make some new images…
Proofs…
LOVE the way this image came out…
I tried to squeeze in as much time on the laser cutter as I could…the plan is for me to edition these plates back in Morgantown…
Obviously I had to take a few breaks along the way…I gave a lecture to students Thursday morning, and we had a reception for the “Bookish” exhibition after.
Sandra also took me out around Jackson a bit…some great food, and of course some really great weather!
A quick stop at “Off Beat”…a pop culture shop, for lack of a better term…
This place was REALLY COOL! Comics, toys, clothes, records…you name it, they probably sold it…
They also had these awesome fake cereal boxes on display and for sale…LOVE these!
I bought some really great buttons…Michael Jackson, John Coltrane, Miles Davis, Gene Wilder, and Malcom X…
In an ideal world, I would of had like two more days to work…but you have to leave eventually…thank you again to Sandra and everyone at Millsaps…I had a BLAST!
Joseph Lupo 
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