Barton College’s Friends of Visual Arts and Friends of Hackney Library jointly sponsored a lecture, “Marginalia, Mischief, and the Ornamented Book,” and reception on Sunday, September 18, at 4 pm in the Willis N. Hackney Library. The event also included the ll Libro: The Art of the Book exhibition at 3:30 pm in the Barton Art Galleries.

The featured speaker was Lisa Beth Robinson, the proprietor of Somnambulist Tango Press (where she makes artists’ books –letterpress, papermaking, printmaking). Ms. Robinson is also an instructor at East Carolina University.

Robinson exhibited her books “Migration” and “Nomad: Orientation” in the “Il Libro: The Art of the Book” exhibition on view in the Barton Art Galleries. Robinson described her books as a visualization of the relationship between language and experience, making connections between disassociated objects and concerns.

She shared her insights regarding the ornamented book, examples of which are in the fore-edge collection of books donated to Hackney Library by the William Leibee Wheeler Estate. Fore-edge books have scenes painted on the closed books’ page edges. (The Wheeler collection of ornamented books is on permanent display in a lighted case just outside the Library Classroom.)

Robinson holds degrees from the Johnston Center at the University of Redlands (Bachelor of Arts) and University of Wisconsin-Madison (Master of Library and Information Science and Master of Fine Arts). Robinson’s teaching experience includes the Arrowmont School of Crafts, the Penland School of Crafts, and the Pocosin Arts Folk School.

Her work is in the permanent collections of numerous national institutions, including the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art in California and the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York.

The lecture was free and open to the public.