Beautiful books and typography on display at Friday’s Art Stroll

REXBURG — This Friday’s Art Stroll is custom-made for admirers of books and the visual beauty of the written word. Artist and typographer Nils Lindstrom will be featured, along with artist and custom bookmaker Scott Samuelson.

The Art Stroll happens this Friday, Feb.2 from 5 p.m. to 8 p.m. at the Romance Theater at 2 East Main Street in Rexburg as part of a free monthly series from Rexburg Cultural Arts that showcases talent and gives the community hands-on art experiences.

Lindstrom has been designing fonts as a professional typographer for decades. He’ll unveil his latest work, a font named “Miss Saylor,” at Friday’s event. The font was inspired by an old candy box Lindstrom discovered in his aunt’s basement when he was helping to sort through her possessions after she died.

“She was 100 years old when she passed away,” Lindstrom says. “We were cleaning out her basement and there was this beautiful box, clearly from the 1930s or 1940s. It had a very French feel to it, and it said ‘Miss Saylor’s’ on the top.”

As he admired the box, Lindstrom says he could “hear a big band playing.” The experience inspired him to create the new decorative typeface, which he’s excited to debut at Art Stroll.

Lindstrom has enjoyed a long and rewarding career as a typographer and teacher, but it’s not what he planned to do as an artist in his youth.

“I didn’t set out with the intention of being a typographer,” he says. “In fact, I just sort of slipped into it because I took a lettering class at Ricks College from Richard Bird in 1973, and after my (LDS Church) mission in 1975. … He was my second father. It was a combination of Dick Bird and Leon Parson who nudged me into looking into ArtCenter College of Design to further my education after Ricks.”

Thanks to his teachers’ encouragement, Lindstrom did pursue an education at ArtCenter College of Design in Pasadena, California, earning his bachelor’s degree in 1980, after which he spent 34 years teaching typography at the same university from 1987 to 2021. During that time, he also maintained his own private studio, creating fonts for sale and for private commercial entities. Some of his typefaces can be found for purchase at MyFonts.com.

After more than four decades in California, Lindstrom says he moved “back to Idaho, where I belong,” in 2021, and is “thrilled to be an instructor of type at BYU-Idaho.” He says that 90% of graphic design is “what you do with the type.”

“If the type isn’t handled right it pulls the whole thing down,” he says. “It feels funky or awkward or not integrated or boring. Typography sets a mood, it creates an atmosphere and it’s usually wholly unperceived by the viewer.”

His own designs, he says, are usually quite decorative and meant for display.

“They’re intended to be used as headlines or sentences or short paragraphs,” Lindstrom says. “You wouldn’t want to read a book set in any of my typefaces. It would be torturous.”

Lindstrom will be in attendance at Art Stroll and is looking forward to sharing his work with the public, along with Samuelson, whose handmade books will also be on display.

Samuelson found his way to art by way of English studies and cultural experiences.

“I have a strong interest in art, but I took no art classes in high school or college,” Samuelson says. “All of my degrees are in English, so I’ve always been involved in books, as my mother read picture books to my sister and me extensively.”

As a child, Samuelson’s family traveled through and lived in Europe, where he was “exposed to the greats of sculpture, architecture and painting,” he says.

Eventually, as an English professor at Brigham Young University-Idaho, Samuelson took an art class from Kelly Bergener, with guest lecturer George Barnhill of Sugar City, who taught about book arts.

“I was captivated,” Samuelson says. “I saw a way to fuse my literary/poetic interests with my artistic interests.”

Samuelson and some friends hired Barnhill to teach a class in basic bookmaking, and also got involved in a Pocatello book arts group, and then a national weeklong workshop on bookmaking that he attended several times over the next few years, eventually being named the Poet in Residence for the event.

An opportunity opened up at BYU-Idaho during a restructuring of the university’s art department, giving Samuelson an opportunity to teach bookmaking.

“The art department was being reorganized when the Spori Building burned down, and the new Spori was being built, so I proposed to the department chair an introductory book arts class with me as instructor,” he says. “I taught that course for a few years in addition to my English classes.”

Samuelson also taught book arts for four semesters at Southern Virginia University while he and his wife were serving an LDS Church mission. In 2020, his work was featured by the Idaho Center for the Book at Boise State University, in a retrospective entitled “The Things We Make.” It was an honor that soon grew into something even bigger for the artist, as he was named Idaho’s first Book Artist Laureate.

“While working on the exhibit, we realized that there ought to be such a thing as a Book Artist Laureate, and that neither Idaho nor any other state apparently has one,” said Idaho Center for the Book Director Stephanie Bacon, in the credits for the exhibit. “Where better than Idaho, and who better than ICB to name one? We hereby name Scott Samuelson as Idaho’s Book Artist Laureate, et omnis gloria!”

(He assumes that last phrase, which translates to “And all the glory,” was meant to be humorous.)

Samuelson’s Art Stroll exhibit this Friday will also include a number of handmade books by local artist Lisa Jones.

“I am grateful to Rexburg Arts for their interest in and encouragement of the arts,” Samuelson says. “Generally in the community and their sponsoring this show and my work specifically.”

Find more information about Art Stroll and other Rexburg Arts opportunities at rexburgarts.org.