Language Survival Guide

Description:	Keeler, Kerry Mc Aleer (printer)Smith, Casey (printer); Original Broadside: Al-Mutanabbi Street Broadsides Arthur and Mata Jaffe Center for Book Arts at the FAU Libraries Letterpress and collage. Edition of 15.During their collective 28 years of teaching book arts and literary studies at the Corcoran, Kerry McAleer-Keeler and Casey Smith have both managed to sustain their careers as working artists—and in the process remain relatable mentors for their students.The two faculty members collaborated on Language Survival Guide, a broadside in the Corcoran Gallery of Arts collection and now on view. “I believe we christened our press with this piece,” recalls McAleer-Keeler, “Collaboration can lead to interesting things through the exchange of ideas.”The broadside was written and printed in 2009 for the Al-Mutanabbi Street Coalition, a group formed in response to the March 2007 car bombing on Al-Mutanabbi Street, the historic heart of the literary and intellectual community in Baghdad. Since the coalitions formation, hundreds of printmakers and book artists from Iraq, the United States, and many other countries have responded to its call for broadsides, honoring a community whose voice will not be silenced by violence. The work was displayed in the Corcoran’s Gallery 31 in July 2012.Combining letterpress, printmaking, art, and poetry, Language Survival Guide “records the need for ongoing vigilance in protecting intellectual and literary freedoms,” says Smith. His 14-line poem is a kind of sonnet, composed of phonetically spelled Arabic phrases taken from an American G.I. phrasebook he found on the sidewalk outside of his Mt. Pleasant row house.McAleer-Keeler decided the piece was about bridging different kinds of people together, and she included several typographic and illustrated elements in her contribution. “The hands were for bringing in the human element from both sides,” she explains of the printed handprints placed on the page, which could also be read as a reflection of the translated first line of the poem: “Stop”.--Corcoran College of Art + Design websiteThis broadside is from the collection of a historic suite of hand-printed literary broadsides which are a part of the Al-Mutannabi Street Starts Here broadside project at the Arthur and Mata Jaffe Center for Book Arts at the FAU Libraries.
Origin:	2009
Created By:	Keeler, Kerry Mc Aleer; Smith, Casey
Contributor(s):	Al-Mutanabbi Street Starts Here Coalition
Source:	http://iuidigital.contentdm.oclc.org/cdm/ref/collection/AMSSH/id/10
Collection:	Al-Mutanabbi Street Starts Here Coalition Collection
Rights:	http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/
Copyright:	In Copyright
Subjects:	broadsides letterpress printing art

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