Benjamin Styer: Selected Works
Editorial & Bookbinding
Benjamin Styer, a Massachusetts-based artist, draws upon vibrant dreamscapes and cadences of medieval manuscripts that could open up the sense of living in a fairytale. With a presence of music and motion throughout his work, Styer’s transcendent pieces came to my mind when assigned to create a book featuring a favorite artist of mine. Using imagery from the gallery Moskowitz Bayse and the eclectic instagram of the artist, @Ben_Styer, I aimed to create a book of selected works from his exhibitions Crystal Piano Rain and Letters from the Black Hours, as well as pieces featured at the Dallas Art Fair, 13 Forest Gallery, and the online art marketplace, Platform.
Falling in love with bookmaking, Styer’s work inspired and directed the book’s physicality, vibrant color language, and visual system. The 132-page book is a coptic/kettle-stitched, open-spined, debossed, fore-edge painted, chipboard bound ‘coffee table book’, accessorized with a removable belly band and bookmark. Incorporating a sense of play to emphasize the work, yet letting the pieces breathe on their own, “Benjamin Styer: Selected Works” was such a fun and challenging project that further taught me the importance of expressive storytelling through visual systems.
This is a student project through the course Book and Archives at Parsons School of Design taught by Kelly Walters. There is one edition of this book & is not to be redistributed.