Sophy DiPinto aka BookGrrl
Artist Bio:
Sophy DiPinto received her BA in Fine Arts from the University of the Arts in 1990. Since then she has taken a circuitous route from bookbinding in college, through the underground rock and experimental art scene, back to bookbinding.
As a visual artist, Sophy DiPinto assumes the persona of BookGrrl, a sort of punk-rock bookbinder. This persona combines the two, divergent pursuits in her life, one being the bookish and quiet artist, the other is the co-owner of DiPinto Guitars, a boutique brand of electric guitars.
Her family was academics, and her father an amateur bookbinder, passed on to her some amazing tools, and a love of hanging out in dusty old libraries and bookstores. She grew up surrounded by books, maybe not as interested in the contents as perhaps she should have been. She has channeled this interest in the book as an object into a unique style of book arts that challenges our assumptions of the relationships of books to knowledge in a way that is especially relevant in this digital age when information is no longer dependent on the book form. Using old, unwanted books as her main material, the books are re imagined and reformed into what we might remember, rather than what they actually are/were.
BookGrrl Bindery is a staple of Philadelphia craft, and her journals and sketchbooks made from old text books are a favorite at area craft shows. They are currently for sale in the Philadelphia Art Museum gift shop.
She is an active member of the Delaware Valley Chapter of the Guild of Bookworkers and The Philadelphia Center for the Book, and a former member of the Nexus Collective for Emerging Artists.
Artist Statement:
I update old books, just as buildings and structures are upgraded and maintained for modern use.
Leafing through a book can be as foreign to young people as dialing a rotary phone. Yet for so much of our history the book was the mightiest tool of enlightenment there was. I have upgraded these books to be objects in their own right, not relics of a bygone era. Everything that we create is built on the back of what came before. I seek to take the information out, we do not need books to store information anymore, and render the book as a visual and tactile object. What remains of the text exists only in an ephemeral arena. In all books there is visual beauty, sometimes to a stunning degree, but it is there to enhance the meanings in the words. I seek to take that meaning out and show the book as the simple object that it is.
Because hardbound book is rapidly fading from our everyday experience, people feel a loss. But often the sense of loss is misplaced. Most people are not avid readers and yet they mourn the loss of books, what are they really mourning? With my work I seek to strip down books into the elements that people relate to in order to re-forge the connection, and also maybe point out that the past was not always so great, and maybe some things should be let go.
Gallery Shows:
Variation on the Artist Book
October 2019, City Hall Galleries, City Hall Philadelphia, member exhibition, Philadelphia Center for the Book.
Smith’s Structures
May-June 2018, @ Free Library of Philadelphia, a group exhibition inspired by the bookbinding structure of Keith Smith
Bird in Hand - Bookbindings by Guildmembers
University of the Arts Dec-2017-Jan 2018