Bevier Gallery show celebrates the ‘pop-up’ (Oct. 19 - Nov. 14)

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Bevier Gallery’s pop-up book exhibit runs through Nov. 14 and features some of the more innovative examples of the artwork.

The creators of pop-up books literally like to play with paper—designing and folding die-cut geometric strips together into working “mechanicals” that sometimes resemble airplane hangars. That’s where the real magic begins, because these jack-in-the-box-like designs between the pages of books highlight everything from three-dimensional dinosaurs, medieval knights, Cinderella, a haunted house and a space shuttle, to more ambiguous themes like nightmares, phobias and celebrity meltdowns.

“Pop-up books captivate and excite the child in all of us,” says Bill Finewood, associate professor at RIT’s School of Art. “I love the fact that the images don’t lie flat; they literally jump off the page. And the process in their design is very much like a miniature-engineering project.”

RIT’s Bevier Gallery presents Pop-Up Books: An Interactive Exhibition, during an opening reception 5-7 p.m. Friday, Oct. 19. The show runs through Nov. 14 and features works from top artists in the field including Chuck Fischer (The White House), David A. Carter (Bugs in Space) and Kyle Olmon (Castle).

“Pop-ups come to life through movement and don’t lock the viewer into a single moment frozen in time,” Finewood explains. “They increase the readers imagination by tempting them to look at all sides of the mechanical, as they search out all the narrative elements used to tell the story.”

What’s amazing is that each and every book is hand assembled, requiring the skilled labor of hundreds of people to manufacture them.

“As we look at a pop-up book, it causes us to wonder, how did they do that? So this exhibition will focus on the behind-the-scenes skills employed by the artists and paper engineers who spend the better part of a year blending creativity and technical methodologies to inform, captivate and excite the child in all of us.”

For more information about the Pop-Up exhibition, call the Bevier Gallery at 475-2646.