[Shattuck Studio & Gallery] Carolyn Shattuck.
Rutland, Vermont:, 2023.
Rutland, Vermont:: Shattuck Studio,, 2023.. One-of-a-Kind. 9.5" x 7.5" 1.5", 33 pages including back pate down. Coptic Stitch binding. Materials: BFK Rives and Japanese papers, cord, hooks, clear Lay Archival Film, laminate, found materials. Carolyn Shattuck: "It was created to honour sea turtles and speak about their endangerment. It troubled me that the sea turtle population was declining due to climate change, loss of habitat, pollution and boat strikes. I visited a sea turtle hospital in Marathon Florida and began my research.
[Lilliput Press] Carol Schwartzott.
Freeville, New York:, 2022.
Freeville, New York:: Lilliput Press,, 2022.. Edition of 20 (12 standard, 8 deluxe). Standard: 3 x 2 7/8", 62 pages. Printed with pigmented/archival ink on Mohawk Vellum. Accordion-fold in flutter construction. Cloth boards with printed title label on spine and quilt collage on front board. Housed in drop-lid box with printed title label on spine and tipped on paper collages on the front of box, interior front board and bottom of box exterior. Signed and numbered by the artist. Deluxe version: Wooden cabinet with shadow box containing quilt fragment and sewing tools. Includes standard miniature copy within the cabinet. Signed and numbered by the artist. Carol Schwartzott: "'A Brief History of the Quilt' was first issued in 1996. The National Museum of Women held a yearly competition for women book artists. The chosen book was given a grant to create/print/bind in an edition of 125 copies - 100 to the Museum and 25 held back to the artist. My Quilt book was imagined to be a co-operative adventure, with actual quilt pages made by selected hand-quilters from America. Each of these 'quilt' would be editions in groups of 25 (these were small examples) with enough actual hand quilted examples distributed within the 125 copies. Each of the elected 25 women would each get one book in return for her contribution. These 25 were those designated to the artist. The book was a close win. The committee was not sure I could pull this off. A year or so later I produced the little boxed version of this Brief History, using paper examples rather than fabric. "The past two years have been a time of examining some of my projects - some finalized, and others just ideas. I thought it would be fun to re-invent the quilt book in a miniature form. I have been active in the MBS [Miniature Book Society] for the past two years, re-visiting my book roots. "In this period, I have completed an edition of 20 minis of 'A Brief History of Knitting'. Eight of these reside within a wooden cabinet of sorts. The cabinet displays a quilt fragment, and some sewing tools.
[Malutzki, Peter] .
Flörsheim, Main, Germany:, 2022.
Flörsheim, Main, Germany:: Peter Malutzki,, 2022.. Edition of 30. 23.8/16.8 cm; 34 pages. Booklet structure. Hand-set song text in Futura Condensed and printed letterpress. Images printed digitally. Numbered and signed by the artist. Peter Malutzki: "'Mona Lisa was composed by Jay Livingston and Raymond B. Evans for the 1949 film 'Captain Carey', U.S.A. But it was the cover version by Nat King Cole who made the song really popular in 1950. "The pictures of the Louvre visitors were taken from the internet and printed digitally. I cut the Mona Lisa pictures out of their photo frames." This painting by Leonardo da Vinci has been on permanent display at the Louvre in Paris since 1797. It is probably one of the best known pieces of art in the world. It has been integral to book plots, an object of parody, and certainly viewed by thousands. In this piece by Peter Malutzki he marries the song words with the crowds milling around the Louvre to catch a glimpse of the smile "Are you real, Mona Lisa? Or just a cold and lonely, lovely work of art?
Baugnet, Julie.
St. Paul, Minnesota:, 2021.
St. Paul, Minnesota:: Bluestem Cottage Press,, 2021.. Edition of 12. Gatefold piece with 4 interior panels. Paper is Rives BFK. Techniques include screen print, drawdowns, and pochoir. Typography is Trebuchet. In paper slipcase with title. Signed and numbered by Baugnet. Julie Baugnet, introduction: "As in my first book, 'When the World was Asked to Shelter', I am trying to make sense out of these chaotic times. This writing is taken from statements in my sketch journals. As we go into our third year, this virus has left the world exhausted and exasperated." Each month beginning March 2021 and ending February 2022 has brief statements from Baugnet that capturres the world's landscape as the virus continues. "March 2021 Vaccine rollout/ / Hope is contagious" .... November Out of the blue - Omicron / Yikes!" ...
[Strong Silent Type Press] Fred Hagstrom.
[Albuquerque, New Mexico]:, 2023.
[Albuquerque, New Mexico]:: Strong Silent Type Press,, 2023.. Edition of 20. 8 x 10"; 30 pages. Printed in intaglio from polymer plates. Printed on Anigoni papers. Ariel Rounded MT Bold for text font. Codex binding with cloth boards. Illustrated pastedowns. Includes bibliography with data and photo sources. Signed and numbered by the artist. Fred Hagstrom: "''This book is about the experience of the 'nuclear vets', service members exposed to radiation during nuclear bomb testing." Introduction: "Between 1945 and 1980, the US, USSR, UK, France, and China carried out more than 500 atmospheric tests of nuclear weapons totaling the explosive equivalent of 440 megatons of TNT. These tests injected radioactive material into the atmosphere, much of which were widely dispersed before being deposited as fallout. Cancer investigators have been studying the health effects of radioactive fallout for decades. "The US conducted 196 atmospheric tests, with 86 in Nevada. The largest in the US was the Hood test on July 5, 1957, detonated from a balloon at 15,00 feet and 74 kilotons.
[Shattuck Studio & Gallery] Carolyn Shattuck.
Rutland, Vermont:, 2023.
Rutland, Vermont:: Shattuck Studio,, 2023.. One-of-a-Kind. 8 x 30"; 4 double sided crocheted panels. Text "Let Go or Be Dragged" in wool across crocheted panels. Crochet wool and Washi paper. Accordion structure. In black boards paper title label on front board. Back board with flap fold in containing information about crocheting and poem by Shiloh Morrison "Crochet". Carolyn Shattuck: "The word crochet comes from the French word HOOK. The term was used for tools in French lacemaking as well as Scottish shepherd's knitting, both of which are precursors to modern crochet. The modern crochet hook was perfected in the 1830's in England. Not until the 1940's, did crochet become popular in America because of the renewed interest in home crafts. In the 1970's granny squares were popularized, often with bright colours. "As far as I can remember, I have been working with wool. When I was a night nurse in Montreal, I decided to teach myself crocheting. It led to creating many afghans, pillows and even a bathing suit. Since I make books, I thought it would be exciting to combine both crocheting and book arts. The art of 'letting go' and crocheting creates a calm mind.
[Baugnet, Julie] Carter Clapsadle.
St. Paul, Minnesota:, 2023.
St. Paul, Minnesota:: Bluestem Cottage Press,, 2023.. Edition of 11. Type: Source Sans Pro. 11/19Gatefold format with two spines. Size: 4.75" x 12" folds out to 24". Paper: Rives BFK white and grey. Type: Source Sans Pro. 11/19. Techniques: Alternative print techniques such as ink drawdowns, erasers prints, and stencils. 7 screenprinted images. Housed in a linen dual-colored case. Printed at Minnesota Center for Book Arts. Numbered. Signed by Clapsadle and Baugnet. Julie Baugnet: "'Staying the Winter' is bound in a unique gatefold format, with 2 spines. On the left, a small book with 7 tercet poems are letterpress printed on Rives BFK grey. The right-hand pages open to reveal a variety of abstract images of winter printed on Rives BFK white. "Illustrations are abstract, using color and texture to convey the emotive qualities of the poems. A family of 5 colors is used to create unity and interest depicting the colors of winter. By making 2 books, I was able to create landscape images that are separate from the narrative. I chose to use abstract imagery-leaving the short poems to evoke imagery for the reader to imagine." Bluestem Press: "This book is a collaborative venture and is a reflection of our countless years staying the winters in Alaska and Minnesota. Clapsadle/Baugnet lead a quiet life-printing, designing, writing, and making books. Our interests inform our perspective, aesthetic, and approach to creativity. "Carter Clapsadle is a landscape architect, writer, and poet. He is an environmental educator and consultant based in St. Paul, MN. His garden designs promote and feature indigenous plants of the midwest. In his spare time he writes, and writes, and writes."
[Lilliput Press] Carol Schwartzott.
Freeville, New York:, 2022.
Freeville, New York:: Lilliput Press,, 2022.. Edition of 20 (12 standard, 8 deluxe). Standard: 3 x 2 7/8", 62 pages. Printed with pigmented/archival ink on Mohawk Vellum. Accordion-fold in flutter construction. Cloth boards with printed title label on spine and quilt collage on front board. Housed in drop-lid box with printed title label on spine and tipped on paper collages on the front of box, interior front board and bottom of box exterior. Signed and numbered by the artist. Carol Schwartzott: "'A Brief History of the Quilt' was first issued in 1996. The National Museum of Women held a yearly competition for women book artists. The chosen book was given a grant to create/print/bind in an edition of 125 copies - 100 to the Museum and 25 held back to the artist. My Quilt book was imagined to be a co-operative adventure, with actual quilt pages made by selected hand-quilters from America. Each of these 'quilt' would be editions in groups of 25 (these were small examples) with enough actual hand quilted examples distributed within the 125 copies. Each of the elected 25 women would each get one book in return for her contribution. These 25 were those designated to the artist. The book was a close win. The committee was not sure I could pull this off. A year or so later I produced the little boxed version of this Brief History, using paper examples rather than fabric. "The past two years have been a time of examining some of my projects - some finalized, and others just ideas. I thought it would be fun to re-invent the quilt book in a miniature form. I have been active in the MBS [Miniature Book Society] for the past two years, re-visiting my book roots. "In this period, I have completed an edition of 20 minis of 'A Brief History of Knitting'. Eight of these reside within a wooden cabinet of sorts. The cabinet displays a quilt fragment, and some sewing tools.
Simmons, Rachel .
Orlando, Florida:, 2022.
Orlando, Florida:: Rachel Simmons ,, 2022.. Edition of 10. 6” tall x 6.5” wide x 1” deep closed; 5.75” tall x 16.5” wide x 14” open. deepTunnel book. Digital printing and letterpress on paper and board.Hard cover with magnetic wrapper box. Rachel Simmons: "This tunnel book is named after the MV Lyubov Orlova, a former Russian icebreaker—now a ghost ship—that took me safely to the Antarctic Peninsula in 2008 and again in 2009. I created the scene by making a collage of elements from multiple photographs taken at various times and locations. Like a colorized postcard, this abstraction of a real experience depicts passengers from the Orlova on a zodiac tour of an iceberg bay. In the foreground, one of my cabin mates, a Tasmanian prison guard on holiday, is taking photographs of the landscape. Towards the back of the scene, the Orlova waits patiently for her passengers to return for food, warmth and comfort. The hyper-saturated colors intentionally flatten the space even as the tunnel structure seeks to deepen it, reframing the polar landscape as a theatrical stage and transforming my personal experience as an eco-tourist into a brightly packaged commodity.
[Deeply Game Publications] Sara Press .
Sebastopol, California:, 2022.
Sebastopol, California:: Deeply Game Publications,, 2022.. Edition of 15. 10" x 8"; 66 pages. Illustrated pastedowns and free end pages. Printed with rubber stamps & pigment ink. Images printed with Indigo Electroink on Mohawk Superfine paper. Font is Cochin. Photography by Sara L. Press. Bound in illustrated paper covers with cloth spine. Signed and numbered by the artist. Sara Press: "'Girls vs. Books' is an artist's book made from my Storied Books* photographic series about vernacular altered books. "The extra-illustrated books in this photo-based project were grangerized, stamped, and drawn-in between 1865 and 1980 by young women who didn't think twice about violating the sanctity of the printed page with their own editorializations. "My photographs, portraits of transcendent everyday objects, cherish the forms and textures of books. Beyond simple lyricism or nostalgia, however, the images celebrate the active consumption of information. They encourage us - even digital natives - to question, enhance, and transmute our received cultural mores. "In a nod to tis content, this edition was printed (on Mohawk Superfine paper) as machine-bound books that I then cut up, rebound, and titled with rubber stamps." *Sara Press, Storied Books: "Books act upon us, changing our minds and lives. We act upon them by turning pages, by dog-earing or underlining important passages, and by passing them around. Certain books bear the marks of more aggressive interaction, however, and this is what I have been documenting with my ongoing project in three parts, 'Storied Books'. "While engaged in the daily struggle to protect my own books from the ravages of little hands, I noticed that many of the crayon- and pencil- marks made by long-grown children have now matured into enhancements. I began photographing volumes that had been 'defaced' long ago by a persistent series of girls and women who have talked back to their books.
Alpers, Rhiannon.
Colorado:, 2022.
Colorado:: Gazelle & Goat Press,, 2022.. Edition of 20 . 5" x 10.25" x 1".; 12 pages including pastedowns. Colophhon on reverse side. Letterpress polymer plates and mono-printed forms. Hand paper-cutting in double-layer carousel-style false accordion binding. Papers: handmade Khadi Natural Cotton, Thai Kozo natural for the back layer, and cave paper to create binding. Covers made of Ultrasuede panels with a natural mica stone inlay. Includes clamshell box with two styles of indigo-dyed Cave Paper, one includes dispersed mica flecks. Signed and numbered. Written in collaboration with Julia Alpers. Illustrated, letterpress printed and bound by Rhiannon Alpers of Gazelle and Goat Press. Gazelle & Goat Press: "'Whispering Stones' explores the concepts of heartache, loss, betrayal and the passage of time through hardship. Using two stones to represent two sisters, one as the moon and the other a large boulder on earth. The siblings each experience life-changing, grief, erosion, and endings in different ways. The poem unfolds as they whisper their stories and woes across the night sky of distant places. The shared conversations are offered as gifts in the deep of night. In traumatic times, there is a solace to the rhythm of companionship and cycles, whether we are stones or beings."
Gorham, AB.
Reno, Nevada:, 2022.
Reno, Nevada:: AB Gorham,, 2022.. Edition of 50. 7.125 x 6.125 x .25"; 16 pages including pastedowns. Letterpress printed on a Vandercook Universal 1 at Black Rock Press. Printed on Zerkall Book papers. Hand bound with resin shapes embedded into front and back covers. Cloth covered drop-spine box enclosure. Signed and numbered by the artist. AB Gorham: "'Unidentified Found Object Song' is an artist book that draws on published documentation of unidentified flying objects (ufos) and other alien phenomenon to create a mysterious visual/reading encounter. This book exists on the edge of visual and textual logic, taking recognizable objects and elements of landscape and defamiliarizing them through digital manipulation, unexpected color combinations, and isolation from context. Each spread contains a vaguely-familiar visual mystery letterpress printed in colors from saturated reds and golds to transparent violets. There is sidewalk cheese, lenticular clouds, and a landscape of crumbs. There is reassurance that what the reader/viewer sees is in fact real. The book ends with a silver landing. The text in the book, densely lyric and fragmented, follows a through-line voice that affirms itself as Transcriptionist, Jokester, Witness. Inspired by ufo research, including Allen Hynek's 'Project Blue Book', first-hand alien encounter documentation, and photos, diagrams and sketches from reported sightings, UFO Song seeks to open up a playful space within the conversation about believability and the shifting nature of truth and understanding. This artist book posits that creating a book-art-reading experience which captures the concept of making familiar things alien could lay the groundwork for larger cultural acceptance of an individual's distinctive, strange, real, or imagined event. "Early written accounts, photographs, or videos of unidentified flying objects or alien encounters were often considered to be hoaxes, but the real casualty of many of these encounters is the way that these events jeopardize the integrity of the individual who experienced the encounter. UFO Song presents imagery and fragments of language in a way that challenges the reader/viewer to make connections, draw conclusions, reveling in an unfamiliar sounds and visual sequences, and maybe even expand their willingness to accept the rarest of visions as possible. "The book's covers bulge toward the head with the shape of an UFO hovering, cast in resin and covered in bookcloth. There is a slit in the cloth exposing iridescent foil, illuminating the spacecraft. The viewer is enchanted by this. There are no revelations as the first spread yawns open, only mystery as text shifts in scale from 42-line Gothic wood type letters to digital all-caps DIN typeface, creating strange object-combinations that float above the horizon in the viewer's brain. The stiffness of the drumleaf spreads, in combination with the propped covers, asks the reader to handle this book with two hands. A sighting touches on the edge of known experience, glances at the infinite of space and is important for what these sightings reveal about our deep human need to experience mysterious phenomenon.
[Crooked Letter Press] Ellen Knudson.
Gainesville, Florida:, 2019.
Gainesville, Florida:: Crooked Letter Press,, 2019.. Edition of 100 (1-53 Deluxe; 54-100 Standard). 4.625 x 5.75" folded. (12 x 18" flat). Single sheet book. Three linoleum cut prints. Printed from photopolymer plates. Written, designed, letterpress printed, and bound by Ellen Knudson. Signed and numbered by the artist. Deluxe: Printed on Okawara paper. Includes wrapper enclosure made from Cave Paper treated with foil stamp and metal grommets. Interior pocket "FEAR" and "DOUBT" cards to be used for personal notes. Standard: Printed on Mohawk Superfine 80# text paper. Delivered flat with instructions to fold into book structure if desired. Wrapper enclosure and pocket cards are not included with the standard edition. Crooked Letter Press: "Talisman is an offering in support of artists and creative people that might be feeling alone in the world these days. Since 2016, as an artist (and as a human being) I have found it difficult to feel motivated while the worst traits of humanity have not only surfaced in our country, but are being celebrated. Writers and artists before us have lived through similarly poisonous times and created iconic works despite the tumultuous climate. Talisman is an amulet, a charm to keep with us. The linocut image of the boat-tailed grackle is intended to be a familiar spirit to guide us through rough territory. In times like these, it helps to keep our friends close.
[Byzantium Press] Barbara Hodgson & Claudia Cohen.
Canada:, 2022.
Canada:: Byzantium Press,, 2022.. Edition of 30. 4to, 94 pages. Text set in Fournier, printed with a handpress on dampened Arches Wove at Heavenly Monkey. Issued in two states, both bound and boxed by Claudia Cohen. This is a standard copy bound in aquarter leather with Cohen's paste papers over boards, gold tooling and leather fore edges. With an additional portfolio of oversize images. Paper Botanists" is the debut publication of Barbara Hodgson and Claudia Coehn under the imprint of Byzantium. "Paper Botanists" explores the connections between paper and botanical arts. As well as extensive imagery and explanatory text there is also a comprehensive bibliograph. the volume contains more than 100 illustrations of herbaria specimens, drawings, nature prints, woodcuts, engravings, lithographs, photographs, marblin and papercuttings. Some illustrations are culled from incomplete volumes of botanical texts over the last 350 years, thers specially created by the authors for this book.
Gomez Bas, Eleonora.
New York:, 2003.
New York:: Eleonora Gomez Bas,, 2003.. Edition of 3. 6 x 9" closed; extends to 114". Text in Spanish and English. Inkjet printing on archival paper. Concertina binding. Numbered. Includes separate colophon "a brief note on the content of this book". Eleonora Gomez Bas: "'Home and Back / Entrehogares' combines a poem in Spanish and English throughout the book, with accompanying photographs taken during my life in Caracas (Venezuela), and New York City. "Having left my home country to move to Venezuela at 10, and later on moving to the United States at 24, attachment, separation, impermanence and adaptation have been major themes in my life since an early age. In my work 'Home and Back / Entrehogares', I use images and poetry to explore my journey of adaptation over the course of the past twenty years. Images blend into each other, depicting a process where I flow from place to place, sometimes more seamlessly than others. Words reflect my search for a sense of self in connection to my place in the world, my home. "Because of its particular binding structure,' Home and Back / Entrehogares' allows the reader to explore the content through many different combinations, perhaps choosing their own personal journey throughout the book. The concertina binding allows the reader to pull the book open in a way that will display all 16 images next to each other to form one single 9 1/2 ft long image, both front-to-back, and back-to-front.
Owen, Jan.
Belfast, Maine:, 2022.
Belfast, Maine:: Jan Owen,, 2022.. Edition of 3. 10 x 19 x 4 inches open, 10 x 6 x .75 inches closed. Accordion flag book. Hand lettered with acrylic and ink on paste painted paper. Paper case. Signed and numbered by the artist. Jan Owen: "I wanted to make a similar book but an intentional one and started making the decorated paper. In 2020, the New York Times decided to capitalize Black as they did in1930 for the designation, Negro. But Black and White is hardly a description of the many shades of skin tones so I made shades of pinks and browns, ochre, and red to make the faces. "The words in “Black White” are about racism said by writers, preachers, Congress. I don’t think there’s one way, there are many ways that we can learn to give up our prejudices. " I feel that - Laws change actions. Stories change hearts. History records. Arts make visible. Music crosses cultures. Sport makes teams.
Owen, Jan.
Belfast, Maine:, 2022.
Belfast, Maine:: Jan Owen,, 2022.. Edition of 3. 10 x 19 x 4 inches open, 20 x 6 x .75 inches closed. Hand lettered with acrylic and ink on paste painted paper. Paper case. Signed and numbered by the artist. Jan Owen: "During the pandemic, like many artist friends I worked with what I had and the Mistake File came out. I selected papers to cut circles and then combined to balance text, colors and patterns. These faces were filled with words, thoughts, ideas and I imagined walking on a busy sidewalk wondering what each person was thinking, what words had filled their eyes. The faces became 'The Minds’s Eye' artist book.
[Visual Studies Workshop] Hannah Smith Allen.
Rochester, New York:, 2020.
Rochester, New York:: Visual Studies Workshop,, 2020.. Edition of 125. 11.5 x 13.5 inches closed; 11.5 x 175 inches open. Double sided accordion. Folded book of collage and map photography. In a hand screen printed, die-cut slip case. VSW: "After the 2016 US presidential election, Hannah Smith Allen began visiting Google Earth to study the wall that separates California from Mexico. She noticed that glitches in the mapping software allow users to slip through the wall into another country's territory. Immediately, she began to video record her Google Earth travels. The digital aberrations of the collapsing wall inspired her to make three physical trips to the US Southern border. This accordion fold book/sculptural form is made from the over 500 photographs the artist made along the physical border as well as extracted video stills from Google Earth. A text weaves through nearly 200 inch wide piece making for "A Physical and Virtual Index of Numbers, Codes, and Crossings (in no particular order).
[Visual Studies Workshop] Ephraim Asili .
Rochester, New York:, 2021.
Rochester, New York:: Visual Studies Workshop,, 2021.. Edition of 500. 8.5 x 11, 12 gatefolds and 1 double gatefold, hidden wire-o binding, includes a 7" vinyl record and comes in a die-cut slip-case. VSW: "Part of the FAB (Film Art Book) imprint for VSW Press, Measuring Time by Ephraim Asili represents a transitional period between the filmmaker's touring and screenings on the festival circuit for The Diaspora Suite and the completion of his first feature film, The Inheritance. While at the BlackStar film festival in his hometown of Philadelphia, Asili began making Polaroid portraits of his community and his interest in photographing expanded soon after. Research elements that play a central role in The Inheritance also factor in this notebook. Included is a 7 inch vinyl record Addendum of the artist's Hip Hop inspired audio journal recordings. A uniquely poetic work in its own right, this book and record document the expansive cosmos around Asili's critically important films. "Ephraim Asili is an African-American artist, filmmaker, D.J., and traveler whose work focuses on the African diaspora as a cultural force. His films have screened in festivals and venues all over the world. Asili resides in Hudson, NY and is a professor in the Film and Electronic Arts Department at Bard College.
[Malutzki, Peter] .
Flörsheim, Main, Germany:, 2021.
Flörsheim, Main, Germany:: Peter Malutzki,, 2021.. Edition of 30. 24.6/17.5 cm; 48 pages. Photos edited in Photoshop. Printed on Bamboo Awagami Paper with archival pigments (Epson SureColor P7500). Text letterpress in Unger Fraktur type. Cloth-over-board with front title label. In slipcase. Numbered and signed by the artist. Peter Malutzki: "’Born to Be Alive’ could be described as a collage novel. It is assembled from the opening passages of the following 18 novels: Julian Barnes, ‘Talking It Over’; Daniel Defoe, ‘The Fortunes and Misfortunes of the Famous Moll Flanders’ and ‘The Life and Strange Surprizing Adventures of Robinson Crusoe’; Charles Dickens, ‘David Copperfield’ and ‘Great Expectations’; Jeffrey Eugenides, ‘Middlesex’; Jonathan Safran Foer, ‘Everything is Illuminated’; Max Frisch, ‘Stiller’; Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, ‘Dichtung’ und ‘Wahrheit’; Robert Graves,’ I, Claudius’; Nicole Krauss, ‘The History of Love’; Frank McCourt, ‘Angela’s Ashes’; Edgar Allan Poe, ‘The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket’, ‘The Spectacles’ and ‘William Wilson’; J. D. Salinger, ‘The Catcher in the Rye’; Muriel Spark, ‘Robinson’; Mark Twain, ‘The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn’. "I joined the beginnings of the novels in such a way that they created a cohesive text, in which the passages of differing lengths refer to one another and keep spinning out a narrative thread. I used the text passages in their original language; two are in German, the rest are in English. All 18 novels are written in the first person and their protagonists introduce themselves at the beginning, telling us their names and usually also where and when they were born. Inspired by this, I illustrated the novels’ figures with photographs of myself at different ages. For three female characters, I used a photograph of my mother at age 15.”
Edelstein, Nancy.
[Seattle, Washington]:, 2017.
[Seattle, Washington]:: [Lawton Press],, 2017.. Edition of 5. 8.75" x 6" x 1.75"; 74 pages including 38 photographs and 21 vellum additions. Accordion structure. Housed in clamshell box. Printing by A & A Printing. Book binding by Andrea Kohler. Bound in illustrated hard covers. Design and photography by Nancy Edelstein. Numbered. Artist statement: "Nancy Edelstein is a fine art photographer and book maker whose work explores memory and the objects that preserve it. Friday Night Dinners brings together visual and story telling components to reveal the power of forgotten memories held in her grandmother's porcelain dishes. This project is the culmination of her unique photographic process, resulting in fine art digital prints and a handmade artist book, honoring those layered images with personal stories of a lost family tradition. "'Contained within are printed translucent vellum pages, enhancing and obscuring the images beneath. As each vellum page is turned, new views of the same spread is revealed." "After opening a box given to me by my mother, I realized that the dishes inside held stories that were both personal and universal. These Danish porcelain plates, bowls and serving pieces, twenty years earlier, had been the backdrop for my grandmother's beautiful table settings every Friday night for the first 18 years of my life. Their translucent texture and hand painted waves and sky, seagulls and sea creatures, had gone unnoticed by me all those years. I was now inspired to capture close ups of these exquisite details which I then modified in a variety of ways and printed on vellum pages. Many of these abstractions were sandwiched together and reshot through a light box, creating unique, softly layered compositions. "As the project developed, forgotten memories of family moments and traditions surfaced, and it became clear that these dishes held the imprint of my family's history. This work has evolved into both a series of fine art images and an installation, as well as an artist's book of the same name.
[ravenpress] Alicia Bailey.
Aurora, Colorado:, 2021.
Aurora, Colorado:: ravenpress,, 2021.. Series variants. 3.6 x 5.75 x 2.25" closed; 6 pages. Materials: mica, paper, thread, brass, plant, bird, insect, reptile specimens, leather, ocean specimen, ink, Acrylic. Signed. Alicia Bailey: "The six pages of this book are made with mica, Moriki paper, plant materials gathered from my yard & favorite forests, feathers from a nearby wetland & butterfly specimens from an inherited archive. The covers are made with collaged leather, using a technique called Lacunose, over book boards. The binding is a wire edge style using brass rods & linen thread. Housed in a box of book board covered with custom painted book cloth. A gifted specimen is attached to a Lacunose tray base. The tray platform is of mica with Moriki paper edging. The box labels are laser etched mica over snake shed specimens & Moriki paper. Alicia Bailey, artist statement: "The 'Animal Mineral Vegetable' series is part of my 'Lovely and Amazing Project', which I began in 2006. The project is an ongoing one that celebrates both the life of Ruth Wheeler and her many gifts to me through my early years. Ruth was a beloved biology teacher, naturalist, youth advocate and feminist who lived and worked in north Denver for 70 years. She was legal guardian of my orphaned father so her role in my life was similar to that of a grandparent. Ruth found the natural world a place of endless delight and shared her enthusiasm with many, including myself, her great-niece. She left behind a collection of biological specimens, notes and photographs which I have incorporated into a series of three-dimensional collages, boxes and book works. Her less tangible gifts to me were a great curiosity about the world we live in, a love of solitude in wild places and her role modeling as a fearless and adventuresome woman navigating solo through the world. "She and I also share the impulse to collect and preserve natural specimens. This series works both to keep my memories of Ruth's spirit from fading and to preserve and present modestly scaled specimens. "The common elements in the 'Animal, Mineral, Vegetable' are primarily material based. The pages are made from thin sheets of mica which limits the size and shape of the books in the series. As the specimens must flatten between the mica sheets, the animal elements are mostly feathers, bits of snake skin, butterfly and moth wings. It is far easier to flatten plant material elements so there is a bigger variety in the vegetable category. Starting with number 9, I switched from using hardwood covers to collaged leather (Lacunose) over book board covers."
