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DEAR
DIARY
MBS Meets in NYC '00
by Ellen G.K. Rubin
(reprinted from Movable Stationery,
November 2000; vol.8, no.4)
Dear Diary,
The cliché, ‘Time marches on.’
rings so true and it’s miraculous how soon a
date one never thought would arrive, does. It’s
been two years since the last Movable Book Society
convention and almost three since the inception of
the exhibition, Brooklyn Pops Up! The History and
Art of the Movable Book. Tuesday’s opening of
the exhibition (see photos) seemed to be a great success
(despite my not having other openings to compare it
to). Robert Sabuda, Ann Montanaro and I (the curators)
were smiling proudly the whole time. The best surprise
was the appearance of Ken Wilson-Max who just showed
up from London, an angel with dreadlocks. Now it’s
time to loosen up a little and welcome the people
who were our target audience for the exhibition, members
of the Movable Book Society. I was so euphoric but
so intent on my role in all of this, Dear Diary, that
I apologize in advance for any omissions I commit.
6:00PM Thursday, September
21, 2000 (the Warwick Hotel/New York City)
Dear Diary,
People are slow to arrive but the air is instantly
convivial. Like a big family everyone immediately
falls into old patterns with the "Show ‘n’
Tell" coming out and the opening lines, ‘Did
you see the pop-up book with……….?’
Of course, Andy Baron, now with Paula patiently in
the wings, is spreading out his amazing books, this
time Percy’s Park, a panorama with multiple
movables. We are Wowed! A small group of us keep talking
and sharing news until the waiters have remade every
table but ours. It’s late. Unable to break up,
we reconvene in Lin Sasman’s room. Feeling like
The Three Bears walking in on Goldilocks, Lin’s
roommate, Laura Hopeman, is already in bed but regally
holds court from her ‘throne’. More ‘Show
‘n’ Tell. We can’t seem to help
ourselves.
9:00 AM Friday, September 22,
Dear Diary,
This is our first full day and despite sleepy, jet-lagged
eyes, we are ready to begin. Coffee will not be served
until the first break at 10 o’clock and there
is a minor frantic search for it. Not to worry. This
is the Big Apple and the City provides. Sitting in
the waiting area is Carla Dijs poring over…..
book contracts? One could pick her out of the crowd
as the European artist she is with her black, thick-rimmed
glasses beneath black spiky hair. She might have made
the short walk to the hotel from the Art Students’
League on West 57th Street. Kees (pronounced, case)
Moerbeek, her husband, is not yet in evidence. The
U.S. is well represented with conventioneers (no we
weren’t wearing funny hats!) from Washington,
San Diego, Santa Fe, Detroit, and Connecticut. Ann
Montanaro calls us to order, warmly welcomes us, and
turns the program over to Roy Dicks, who had graciously
agreed to put together the convention’s program.
Roy, with his friendly but no-nonsense approach, is
determined to stick to the time-line of the program
and introduces Adie Peña to discuss his collection
of pop-ups with a musical theme. Those of us who have
met Adie before know of his extensive collection lovingly
housed in what he calls, The Museo Mobiblio. His slide
show, he announces, will be "Collector Friendly",
meaning he will make us drool but will also provide
buckets. He speaks of his love of music, hence, his
partiality to pop-ups with musical themes. S. Louis
Giraud and Kubasta, he points out, were generous with
their musical attributions. Adie’s movables
range from a Schubert Piano business card from 1892
to a flip book of Bart Simpson with a CD. No category
of music is left without a pop-up memento. Broadway
is represented by Irving Berlin’s pop-up program
from "The Music Box Revue" (1922), "The
Phantom of the Opera Pop-up Book" (1988), and
even Joel Camel, now banished, makes a cameo appearance
in a print ad for Ticketron with tickets to Broadway
shows. Jazz has a press kit for "Left of Cool"
and a 1965 Gerry Mulligan album with a pop-up record
jacket. Rock is embodied in Van der Meer’s,
"Rock Pack" and Led Zeppelin’s "Stairway
to Heaven" (1992) and an ‘Elvis is King’
souvenir card from 1983 engineered by Ib Penick.
Music lends itself to multi-media and Adie’s
collection boasts record jackets and CD cases with
pulsating lights, clocks, thumb handcuffs (!!?), and
shapes- a coffin (Megadeath’s "Rest in
Peace") and police badge (Police). There is no
question this all is just the tip of the iceberg.
Adie also touched on a Hallmark series and many Disney
titles both with records inside. ‘Collector
Friendly’ my foot!!!!
10:00AM
Our First Break
Dear Diary,
With a cup of coffee waking me up, I plunge into
the crowds of happy collectors. Little did I know
I would come face-to-face with The Enemy. Several
people had put their e-mail addresses on their name
tags, the sight of which gave me a chill. Here I was
meeting the dreaded "Sudspoth", "Pherley",
and MariaPW, those pirates who plunder my treasures
off Ebay. I had imagined these ‘blackhearts’
with smirking faces and multiple hands sporting rapidly
moving fingers, not to mention dollar signs swirling
in beady eyes. But, no, here they were as genuinely
friendly and eager to meet each other as long-time
pen-pals. I so wanted to spend time together to swap
tales of woe or of glories and gain. But, alas, I
was called away and lost the opportunity. What a great
‘reunion’ it would have been. I hope the
chance presents itself again.
10:30 AM
Dear Diary,
I was very eager to meet Kees Moerbeek who had come
all the way from the Netherlands. Looking lean, youthful
and prematurely gray (too many glue points?), I was
anxious to hear from the paper engineer whose interpretation
of Pienkowski’s Haunted House had sexual innuendoes.
Kees gave us a window into how he makes pop-up books
using his new Spooky Scrapbook as an example. Scrapbook
is filled with pull-outs, gatefolds and flaps. So
much so, it took him three months just to get everything
to fit into the book. He sees the pop-up book as ‘organized
chaos’ and looks to introduce the ‘unexpected’
into his works. Scrapbook is about a birthday party
for a vampire child. What may account for its comfortable
reality are the costumes he found in a 19th century
book of fashion, the pattern for the china coming
from his parents’ "good dishes", and
the use of actual dead flies which were scanned into
the computer. With slides, he walked us through his
initial pencil drawings which he then moves to the
computer, adding color. All the artwork then can be
put onto CDs easing his work with foreign publishers
and printers. Kees always makes 3D models crediting
the computer with his ability to easily make more
dummies. Working on as many as three projects as once,
all of them ‘dimensional’, Kees avows
to only make books he likes. When no ideas are forthcoming,
he looks to his childhood, especially birthdays, where
there was excitement and surprise. He credits his
earliest influence to a single-spread Cinderella he
saw when he was 4 years old. Now, with Carla Dijs
as an able partner, Kees maintains he still learns
by doing. The new Christmas book he shared with us
showed he continues to learn well.
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