A year is spent on each book project researching, traveling, creating, designing, and editing. Grimm Gestalt is our fifth publication. We tasked Art & Design students to create work inspired by the stories of the Brothers Grimm. Gestalt is the German word for an organized whole that is perceived as more than the sum of its parts.
Rhyan Edminston and Clark Clifford
Hannah Johansen
Marissa Clement
A few years ago, an academic experiment began a multi-disciplinary collaboration between faculty and students in the Department of Art & Design at Utah Valley University. Our end goal has been to create a fine art book that showcases the creativity, innovation, and ingenuity of our department. It is a carefully orchestrated performance for visual artists. Approximately one year is spent researching, traveling, creating, designing, and editing each project. Grimm Gestalt is our fifth publication with all proceeds from book sales directly funding the publication of future engaged learning experiences for our department. Each prior book has received recognition in state, regional and national competitions from organizations such as Independent Publishers Book Awards, PPI PrintROCKS!, DesignArts Utah, AIGA 100 Show SLC, and PRINT magazine.
Childhood stories that have inspired so many came into existence along the Märchenstraße in Germany. “Marchenstrasse” literally means “fairy tale road” and is one name used to refer to the region of Germany where we traveled. The idea of working on a project centered around the Brothers Grimm fairy tales intrigued us from the very start of this experiment. We wanted to overlook the pop culture interpretations that the world is so familiar with and try to explore the legendary stories anew.
We chose the title Grimm Gestalt for this particular book. “Gestalt” is the German word for an organized whole that is perceived as more than the sum of its parts. The original collection of stories published as Kinder-und Hausmärchen by Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm are colloquially referred to as the Brothers Grimm fairy tales; yet none of the stories were written by them. The published stories were verbal folk tales collected and later refined by the Brothers Grimm, but not of their own creation. The stories are inherently eclectic from this lack of having a single author.
We tasked printmakers, painters, illustrators, sculptors, and photographers to create work inspired by these stories. Art historians researched and wrote about the Brothers Grimm. Within each of these artistic genres, the variety in approach is as stark and diverse as the stories themselves. Imagery ranged from playful to disturbing and from literal to poetic. The artists involved were encouraged to explore and play to each of their own strengths and creative processes.
The graphic design team were then charged with taking a varied collection of stories and curating a diversified collection from over 2,500 pieces of art and combining them into a new cohesive whole. The designers created six unique styles that were intermittently repeated. Individual stories were imbued with unique personalities. Each one has a distinctive flair in color, typeface, and feel. No story is preceded or followed by the same style. The fonts range from classical to bizarre much like the stories themselves. Playing off of the notion of gestalt, the creative synergy was revealed in unexpected ways, the whole being truly more than the sum of its parts.
