Evanston Art Center exhibits works from the 10th International Artists Book Triennial Vilnius 2024

Postcards are uncommon materials to use when creating a book. Yet, the artists featured in the 10th International Artists Book Triennial Vilnius 2024 use a wide variety of materials –– including postcards –– to create artists’ books that each tell unique stories and narratives.

Thirty-two pieces from the 10th Triennial are on display at the Evanston Art Center from Jan. 9 to Feb. 16. The entire 10th Triennial features 77 pieces made by artists from 29 different countries.

“It’s really an amazing show,” said Emma Rose Gudewicz, director of development and exhibitions at the EAC. “We don’t get to show a lot of artists’ book objects. It’s not something that you typically get to see a whole exhibition of just (artists books). So to see all of the practical skill that goes into making the books is really amazing.”

After the 9th Triennial, which was only conceptual, curator Kestutis Vasiliunas didn’t plan on making more Triennials, he said. But, he said, many artists asked him to do one more.

Vasiliunas decided that if artists wanted it, then another triennial was meant to be for everyone involved, he said. The theme for the 10th Triennial, “To Be,” became even more important to him after the start of the wars in Ukraine and Palestine, he said. 

“To be or not to be?” Vasiliunas said, “For art to be or not to be, for all of us, it’s a question.”

The 10th Triennial is not the first Triennial to come to Evanston. After meeting Vasiliunas at one of the venues where the 8th Triennial was being exhibited, book artist Stephen Murphy helped facilitate the works being exhibited at the EAC, he said. 

Murphy learned from Vasiliunas that the reason why the triennials had not been shown in the United States was partly due to difficulties finding the funds to send the books and acquiring venues to display the works, he said. The two eventually found funding from a variety of sources and were able to bring the 8th Triennial to the EAC. 

“I think it is very important, not for me, but for artists, for all artists to be exhibited in (other) spaces, in other countries,” Vasiliunas, who hails from Vilnius, Lithuania, said. 

Visual artist Carole Kunstadt said it was an honor to be accepted into the 10th Triennial. 

“It’s a validation that (I’m) doing something significant, that it can be shown in an international platform and continue to be seen by different populations and different cities throughout Europe but now in the U.S.,” Kunstadt said. 

While in the U.S., works from the 10th Triennial will also be exhibited in Reed Library of SUNY Fredonia and at the Morgan Art of Papermaking Conservatory & Educational Foundation in Ohio.

Kunstadt’s piece “Valle de la Meuse: an environmental paradigm” is composed of five postcards that she wove together from a souvenir pack of 10, she said. 

The postcards depicted tourists taking leisurely excursions on the Meuse River, a major European river that runs through France, Belgium and the Netherlands, and the river’s surrounding countryside, Kunstadt said. While Kunstadt did not know much about the river when she bought the postcards, she later found out that the river became polluted in the 1930s and changed drastically, she said. 

“I think what’s significant for me is that we can’t continue to go forward unless we look back,” Kunstadt said. “We need to know what has happened in the previous decades or a century to ours and to know what we’ve done right and what we’ve done wrong.”

James Thurman, professor of metalsmithing and jewelry at the University of North Texas, has a piece entitled “The Question” also on display in the EAC. Parts of his pieces are carved from pages of a used copy of “Hamlet” that he glued together using plant-based resin. 

He said he hopes his piece causes the audience to pause and reflect on their daily experiences.

“I’m hoping to draw people in very intimately and to get them to slow down a lot and to really just resonate with a physical object, as opposed to the sort of barrage of digital media that we all are subject to daily,” Thurman said. 

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