Jaime Lynn Shafer

4-12-16
On April twelfth I attended the artist lecture given by the Black Rock Press’s Jaime Lynn Shafer, in which she spoke about her Book Art and other collaborated projects.  Jaime Lynn Shafer is a part of the Black Rock Redfield Fellow at the University of Nevada, Reno and has received a BFA in Ceramics and MA in Art and Book Arts, and she has taught in public school for thirteen years.  During her lecture she spoke of her past projects such as movie posters, giving tours and demonstrations, and assisting with classes.

Her personal projects contain both collaborative and solo projects.  The first collaborative work that she talked about is her “What We’re Made Of”.  This project is different poems put together with a piece of imagery.  Shafer did the imagery while her collaborative partner put together the poems.  There were a total of 25 prints for this project. 

Jaime Lynn Shafer focused more on her solo projects, which consisted of mainly book arts.  The first book she discussed was “1 in 3”.  This piece of work is about domestic violence, having images of abused victims under lines of text that are statistical facts and other information on domestic violence and abuse.  The text is also from various conversations and domestic violence websites and groups.  On the spine of the book is a single image of a woman who is unknown, a Jane Doe, to represent those who can’t get out of their situations.    Her next book art is called “17927”.  This number refers to a specific area code that is the town of Centralia, Pennsylvania. The book is a three panel tunnel book that is made of linoleum blocks.  A map of the town is shown on the left and right side of the tunnel with a key showing where a fire had occurred.  This fire was so large that the entire town had to be evacuated and now only seven people remain.  The text of the book goes around the outside and into the tunnel, which pops out from the book and can be stretched out.   Shafer’s next project was “Code Red”, which related to some school shootings that were occurring at the school in which her wife works.  The book opens so that the center pops out to create a square with brick printed on the outside and silhouettes of different figures.  Different words are placed around these figures and are from multiple police reports.  When reading the book left to right, on the left hand panel, the definition of the term ‘code red’ is printed, which is major danger.  The on the right hand panel the bookends with “don’t panic, but we are in lockdown.  Active shooter…”  This book art is meant to bring attention to the careless storage of guns and how easily accessible they are.  The last project that Jaime Lynn Shafer spoke about was the “Old Greiger Grade”, a Black Rock Press parley Project.  This project was inspired by a place on the University’s campsite and the book maps the Greiger Grade Road and its topography. 

I really loved all the works that Jaime Lynn Shafer shared with us during the lecture.  Each piece had such a great message behind it and they were created and displayed well.  While some of the topics have been heard of before, I have never seen them presented in this medium of the book art.