Elaina Johann, administrative manager
Believe it or not, work on the Birds in Art catalogue starts the moment notifications are sent to accepted artists on the first Friday in May. It’s no easy feat to complete this project so that pallets of catalogues are delivered to the Museum’s loading dock by the opening weekend of Birds in Art.
The bulk of this endeavor is taken on by collections and project manager Holly Van Eperen who leads the artist statement review process, color-proofs artwork images, sets all the text and images on catalogue pages, and navigates the overall aesthetic of the book. There are many other staff members that help make it all come together across many rounds of editing and review, including Bryce Cebula, Matt Foss, Rachel Hausmann-Schall, Shannon Pueschner, Allison Slavick, Amalia Wojciechowski, and myself. We each have a role that plays to our strengths and makes this project one of the most rewarding deliveries you will receive in a professional career.
Those that have picked up the catalogue while viewing Birds in Art Fifty or have ordered one through our shop, have seen—and felt—how exceptional it is, fitting for this momentous year. In addition to the beauty of the 101 juried artworks and forty-one works both new and from the Museum’s collection representing every past Master Wildlife Artist, the cover and fly sheet are products of considered design and trial and error with our printer Reindl Printing in Merrill, Wisconsin.
The concept behind this year’s cover design came together rather quickly by former graphic designer/multimedia specialist, Daniel Knoedler. A line drawing of the Museum from its current main entrance on the cover with a historic line drawing of the Museum’s original 12th Street entrance on the back cover. The rendition of the Museum on the back cover was sourced from the original Birds in Art invitation sent out to artists and guests in September 1976. The concept for the fly sheet, the first page that you open, was a detail of the brick exterior of the Museum’s original house structure printed on a transparent sheet peeking to the Birds in Art Fifty logo on the next page. All a fitting tribute to where we come from, where we are, and what’s to come. All great ideas take time to develop and this year’s catalogue was a labor of love.
We met with Reindl to share the cover concept, and they delivered many possible solutions. They involved printing, embossing, colored sheets, UV coatings, foil stamps, and many other technical printing processes. We settled on a clear and gold foil stamp applied to a colored sheet of paper—but it wasn’t as simple as that. Luckily, we ran a sample and with it, we discovered that the clear foil easily scratched when applied on the colored paper. Back to Reindl it went, and they troubleshot an alternative option. To our surprise, it was even better.
What you hold in your hands now is a plum cover MoHawk Mosaic paper. The sheet went to MCD in Madison and was first covered with a soft touch UV specialty coating, followed by a clear foil stamp of the building exterior and a gold—selected from hundreds of options—foil stamp for text and logos. Reindl then printed the fly sheet on the transparent paper and dozens of signatures, sixteen pages all printed on both sides of one larger sheet, to make up the 152-page catalogue. The signatures are then sent off to the binder for the pages to be cut down, glued at the spine, and perfect bound.
Combining all these processes, the catalogue itself is a sensory experience. The soft touch UV coating feels almost like the skin of a peach and the foil stamps both offer the slick surface a relief effect to the paper that creates depth where the foil is applied. Then you open it up and there is even more to experience with every artwork featured in the exhibition alongside the artist’s statement. Many brains came together to create a stunning product that celebrates the Leigh Yawkey Woodson Art Museum’s history and fifty years of Birds in Art.
If you still need to acquire your catalogue, purchase one at the Museum’s Visitor Service desk the next time you view Birds in Art Fifty or order at our online shop or by phone 715.845.7010.
