Artist and bookmaker Melanie Mowinski in the studio with and of her 'Plunder Books.' Her sustainable creations won her a $5,000 award from the Guild of Bookworkers.
A book made out of her old cloth diapers her mother gave her among other recycled materials.
The printmaker showcased her "Plunder Books," a sustainable artistic practice in which she takes trash and discarded items and recycles them into a story. She's also offered a course of the same name.
She didn't believe she would get the award at first and had not planned to apply. But a friend of hers encouraged her to submit her work.
"When I applied for it, I had a lot of imposter syndrome related to it, because the kind of books I make are not traditional books. And the Guild of Book Workers is this national organization about binding. You know, fine book binding and decorative book binding, more alternative kinds, all kinds of book binding, and which I know how to do all of it, but I really like doing this more sort of sculptural, inventive kind of book binding," she said.
Her books are a combination of many types of recyclables. One of the books, "Lost," is made of plastic bags, discarded charging cords, and old balloons she found, among other things. She describes this book as showcasing a "lost connection to our home."
Her sustainable practice was shaped during her graduate studies at The University of the Arts in Philadelphia, where she studied under book artist Hedi Kyle. As Kyle's teaching assistant, Mowinski was introduced to the concept of "Plunder Books," a generative process involving the creation of books from found materials.
She said she started getting into picking up trash after a trip to Jamaica, where she saw a beach covered in litter.
"The trash on the beach in this part of Jamaica, was unbelievable, unbelievable. And I was just in Florida, and in a space that's like the size of this room [her classroom], I picked up 70 plastic bottle caps, toothbrushes, 70, and then two other pieces of plastic, that's all I could carry," she said. "So it's easy not to see it. We live in a pretty pristine place. There's trash on the roadways, not a lot, but there is, there's places, and this book is sort of inspired by this."
She used to volunteer with the Peace Corps and she would pick up trash with a friend who was an environmental educator, and also her time living in Arizona had made her become mindful of the waste being thrown out as well as water usage. She explained that she wants to "live lightly."
"I had this conversation with a French artist named Michèle Blondel, and she's like 85 years old, and she's in the middle of this project, called 'to die lightly' ... I was getting ready to walk the Camino Francis in Spain, so I walked over 500 miles with only whatever I could carry. And I had an outfit I wore during the day, an outfit I wore at night and my sketchbook," she said. "And I thought about that phrase, I wanted to die lightly, and thinking about myself, I want to die lightly, but I want to live lightly."
And thus her journey began into creating sustainable pieces that tell a story and help her to "live lightly."
Brien Beilder, who makes custom leatherbound books and hand-engraved stamps, also received the award. They both were awarded $5,000.
Mowinski had wanted to rescue a rare wood typeset from a local shop for her press studio but didn't have the money and someone else purchased it. While she is hoping to still get it from the buyer, she also wants to develop a new technique for creating a strong paper from recycled materials as she makes a lot of scrap as a printmaker.
"Trying to to do some experiments with paper making, when you make paper from recycled paper, it's not as strong as the original paper, and so there is part of me that wants to figure out how to make stronger recycled paper and I make a lot of scrap and make a lot of waste," she said. "A lot of printmakers make a lot of waste, and I try not to do that, but, so I think about that a lot, how can I repurpose that? And could I think about a way of making paper?"
Mowinski has been teaching art at MCLA for 17 years, and is always learning and building on her projects in sustainable ways.
"A lot of art making for me is problem solving, and the fun of it is that piece of getting an idea or seeing something and trying to think about, how could I repurpose or reuse that, or make that or fix that," she exclaimed.
Mowinski will attend the guild's annual Standards of Excellence conference this weekend where she will be honored in Iowa City, Iowa.
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