Books On Books Collection – Helen Malone

2020/07/232025/11/12Books On Books1 Comment

Alphabetic Codes (2005)

Alphabetic Codes (2005)

Box containing three books: two concertina books of different sizes and one tetrahedron shape of three pages. Two layered canvases painted with acrylic paint mounted on both sides of Perspex pages in Perspex box. Box: H230 x W160 x D80 mm. Unique edition. Acquired from the artist, 2 July 2020. Photos above: Courtesy of the artist. Photos below: Books On Books Collection.

Artist’s description:

Referencing ancient writing systems, hieroglyphs and engravings, this book is an investigation of sign systems and shared cultural knowledge. Fragmented coded images derived from familiar letterforms lie beneath the surface of the canvas and although visible remain undecipherable and incomprehensible.

The alphabet has traditionally served as calligraphic and typographic seed for book art, perhaps with roots of expression in illuminated letters, the Kabbalah, tomes on penmanship and calligraphy and typography specimen books. In its material and technique, Alphabetic Codes has a rough and smooth tactility; the former pointing to ancient, haptic forms, the latter to current, screen-generated forms. It enriches the subset of alphabet books and abecedaries in the Books On Books Collection.

Exhibitions:

Books 05 Image as Text as Image, Noosa Regional Gallery 9 September – 17 October 2005.
Botanical Books, Coffs Calligraphers, Botanic Garden, Coffs Harbour, 29 September 29 – 7 October 2007.

Windows on the World (2005)

Windows on the World (2005)

Helen Malone

Perspex box containing two concertina books of different sizes made of recycled Perspex panels with mounted canvas painted with acrylics. Box: H360 x W125 x D75 mm. Unique edition. Acquired from the artist, 2 July 2020. Photo: Books On Books Collection.

Photos: Books On Books Collection.

Artist’s description:

Technological illuminations such as television screens, computer screens, big screens and advertising visually transmit images and act as carriers of global information, education and entertainment. The medieval purpose of stained glass windows, besides aesthetic and mystical was to visually educate and enlighten.

Purely in color, Windows on the World recalls Albers, Chagall, Mondrian (even though he hated stained glass) or Joep Nicolas. In material, technique and theme, it may echo Alphabetic Codes and its allusion to computer-screen-based windows, but Windows has a more architectural feel that can also be found in the I.M. Pei and Mies van der Rohe “volumes” of Ten Books on Architecture (2017) further enriching the architectural subset of the Books On Books Collection.

Exhibition:

Books 05, Image as text as Image, Noosa Regional Gallery, 9 September – 17 October 2005.

Beautiful One Day,
Blown Away the Next (2011)

Beautiful One Day, Blown Away the Next (2011)

Helen Malone

Box containing circular concertina flag book of Fabriano paper, manipulated digital photographs cut and transferred to flags. H90 x W190 x D55 mm closed, 380 mm diameter open. Unique edition. Acquired from the artist, 2 July 2020. Photo: Books On Books Collection.

Artist’s description:

On the eve of 2 February 2011 Cyclone Yasi made landfall on the coast of Queensland. Sweeping through the coastal communities, the Category 5 Tropical Storm of historic proportions left a trail of mayhem and destruction that inspired the artist Malone to create this piece.

Photos: Books On Books Collection.

Bringing together a flag book, concertina and tab-and-lot closure, Malone engineers an ideal structure to evoke the meterological pattern and order of the cyclone. The shattered, blue-filtered photographic images transferred to the flags contribute a kaleidoscopic chaos. The theme of the environment and the struggle between the human race and natural forces is a subset of the Books On Books Collection well represented by this work, Tsunami (below) and others such as Holuhraun by Chris Ruston and Landscapes of the Late Anthropocene by Philip Zimmerman.

Exhibition:

Books…beyond words evolution, East Gippsland Art Gallery, Bairnsdale,Vic., 6 August – 3 September 2011.

Tsunami (2011)

Tsunami (2011)
Helen Malone
Box containing “whirlwind” book of Japanese paper washed with sumi ink and water, Japanese stab binding, leather roll. H230 mm, variable width. Unique edition. Acquired from the artist, 2 July 2020.
Photo: Books On Books Collection.

Photos: Books On Books Collection.

Artist’s description:

Part of the series of disasters explored by Malone through her art, this piece is her interpretation of the catastrophic tsunami that followed the massive earthquake that struck Japan in 2011.

The earthquake and tsunami were so powerful that their effects were felt around the globe: from Antarctica’s ice sheet to the fjords of Norway. Indeed the debris from the monstrous wave continues to wash up on North American shores nearly a decade later.

The combination of Japanese paper and mottled color of sumi ink and water, the way the work “fights back” as the scrolls are manipulated to display the work, the multiple displays generated by the piling wave-like scrolls — all evoke the picture of inescapable, roiling force of the 2011 tsunami.

Paper, Scissors, Uluru (2013)

Paper, Scissors, Uluru (2013)

Helen Malone and Jack Oudyn

Laser printed images of waxed drawing, collage, painting and Chinese paper covered boards painted by Jack Oudyn with earth pigments, acrylic and xanthorrhoea resin. Sculptural folded page book structure and box by Helen Malone. H105 x W95 x D15 mm. Editions: 6 and 1 A/P. Acquired from Helen Malone, 2 July 2020. Photos: Books On Books Collection.

Photos: Books On Books Collection.

Artist’s description:

Malone and Jack Oudyn collaborated to create this representation of Uluru to resonate with the pleas of the indigenous Anangu people of the Northern Territory in Australia to “Wanyu Ulurunya Tatintja Wiyangku Wantima” (Respect our laws and culture).

For the Anangu the massive sandstone monolith is so sacred that they will not climb it nor photograph it. They ask visitors to respect the spirituality of the site and to follow their customs.

The blend of laser prints of wax drawings, Chinese paper, collage and painting seeks to capture the changing light of the rock as the sun passes over it throughout the day. The boards painted by Oudyn with earth pigments, acrylic and xanthorrhoea resin contribute a glowing depth of color to this homage to the Anangu. As with The Future of an Illusion (below), this collaboration presents an unusual unity of vision and integration of technique, materials and process with structural “rightness” for the subject at hand.

Exhibitions:

Art on Show Awards, Artspace Mackay Artist Book Award, Mackay Show Association, Mackay Qld, 16-19 June 2014.
Sheffield International Artists Book Prize, Bank Street Arts, Sheffield UK, 7-31 October 2015.

Collections:

Bank Street Arts, Sheffield UK.
Wim de Vos, Brisbane.
Private collection, Brisbane.
Private collection, Melbourne.

The Legacy of Absence and Silence (2016)

The Legacy of Absence and Silence (2016)

Helen Malone

Binding of French faux leather. Multiple accordions in Fabriano 200gsm HP paper and Strathmore papers, pigmented ink, acrylic ink, printing ink, gold leaf, chinagraph pencil and image transfers. Closed: H780 x W50 x D150mm; Open: W750 mm. Unique edition. Acquired from the artist, 2 July 2020. Photos: Courtesy of the artist.

Artist’s description:

The Legacy of Absence and Silence refers to the present-day Australians whose forbears were immigrants to the continent in the nineteenth century. Many of those who came to Australia during that period made such an effort to assimilate that they have left no clues for their descendants to discover their origins. In fact some immigrants went to great lengths to eradicate their beginnings. In this work Malone has designed the structure of the book to reflect the effort of a search for meaning. The black foreground requires the viewer to struggle to peer inside the construction to glimpse details. Beyond the visual obstruction the white pages reveal snippets of information but never the full story.

Photos: Books On Books Collection.

This is a work that demands display in-the-round on a table allowing viewers to lean far enough over to catch the details within the cells formed by the joined accordions, to circle it to see how emblems and signs emerge and disappear, and to move closer and step back to experience the shifting geometric patterns.

Exhibition:

Libris Awards, Artspace Mackay, Queensland, from 26 August – 16 October 2016.

The Future of an Illusion (2017)

The Future of an Illusion (2017)

Helen Malone and Jack Oudyn

Sculptural tunnel book structure (three joined four-fold leporellos) enclosed in a folder and protective boxin a box,. Box made with Lamali handmade paper, suede paper (lining), silk ribbon and Somerset Black 280 gsm; Folder: Canson black 200gsm, skull button and waxed thread; Leporello: center leporello made of Canson black 200 gsm, adjoining leporellos made of Arches watercolour paper 185 gsm with acrylic, soluble carbon, gouache and transfer ink jet images. Box: H275 x W313 x D34 mm; Folder: H258 x W295 x D21 mm; Book: H250 x W290 x D16 mm closed, D770 mm. One of an unnumbered, signed edition of 4. Acquired from Helen Malone, 12 September 2017. Photo: Books On Books Collection.

Photos: Books On Books Collection.

Like The Legacy of Absence and Silence, this work uses joined accordions, but builds on the cut-outs in the former to construct a tunnel book down the middle. The integration of structures here is further remarkable as a result of another collaboration between Malone and Jack Oudyn. Selected for the 2017 Manly Library Artists’ Book Award exhibition in New South Wales, Australia, The Future of an Illusion demonstrates an effective collaboration in a field of art densely populated with — almost defined by — collaborative efforts. One pair of artists to compare with Malone and Oudyn is Sonia Delaunay and Blaise Cendrars. Over a century ago and half a world away, they collaborated on La Prose du Transsibérien et de la Petite Jehanne de France, also in an accordion format modified perfectly to its subject with an aim to create a work in which color, image and words are experienced simultaneously. Malone writes that it “has always been very influential generally on my work” (correspondence with Malone, 24 September 2017).

Rather than springing from an interaction over one poem, The Future of an Illusion springs from two imaginations struck by two literary works: Sigmund Freud’s eponymous book arguing against belief in an afterlife and Jim Crace’s novel Being Dead documenting the decomposition of a dead body left in nature. The choice of the two texts, the colors of putrescence, the void toward which the central tunnel leads, the coffin-like box in which the work is stored, locked with a button skull — all create a simultaneous tension of several emotions — fear, humor, sorrow, hope, despair, revulsion and aesthetic pleasure.

Photo: Books On Books Collection.

Exhibitions:

Between the Sheets, Central Gallery, Perth , WA, 18 March – 8 April 2017.
Second venue for Between the Sheets, Australian Galleries, Collingwood, Melbourne, Vic, 13 June – 2 July 2017.
Manly Library Artists Book Award, The Creative Space, North Curl Curl, NSW, 30 March – 2 April 2017.
Art on Show Awards, Artspace Mackay in association with Mackay Show Association, 11-22 June 2017.
6^th Artists Books Fair, Grahame Galleries in association with Griffith University, Brisbane, 7 – 9 July 2017.

Collections:

Artists (1/4 & 3/4), State Library of Queensland Artists Book Collection, Brisbane (4/4).

Ten Books of Architecture (2017)

Ten Books of Architecture (2017)

Helen Malone

Open-sided box containing ten individual adapted book structures. Closed: H175 x W440 x D110 mm; Open: H500 x W600 mm. Version 4. Acquired from the artist, 24 November 2017. Photo: Books On Books Collection.

Inspired by De Architettura by Vitruvius and De Re Aedificatoria by Leon Battista Alberti, Malone created her first version of this work in 2006. Three others followed: in 2012, for the Pratt Institute; in 2013, for the State Library of Queensland; and in 2017, for this collection. In the 2012 version, the sixth book — Queenslander — differentiates that version from the others. The 2017 version is differentiated by its tenth book — Zaha Hahid.

These differentiators signal the abundant variety of structures within each version. Their unerring “rightness” for the subject of each “volume” astounds.

Book One — Vitruvius — consists of embossed and cut concertina folds of Arches paper with diluted sumi ink; when displayed, the line of columns suggests a Roman temple. Book Two — Suger — celebrates the French patron of Gothic architecture with an adapted tunnel book with cut concertina sides in Canson and Arches paper, ink and watercolor; when displayed, the structure suggests the stained glass windows of St. Denis. Book Three — Brunelleschi — is a folded page construction of Canson paper with page inserts of Canson and Arches paper, PVC ribs and covers; when displayed, it references the dome of the Cathedral of Santa Maria del Fiore in Florence, the internal colors of the cathedral and Brunelleschi’s credited invention of linear perspective. Book Four — Alberti — is a concertina fold book in Fabriano and Arches paper with PVC covers; its gutters and collaged pages make a structure resembling shallow facades on which several of Alberti’s statements elaborating Vitruvian principles are printed. Book Five — Mackintosh — adapts a French door construction in Arches paper, watercolor, ink and PVC to celebrate the Scottish architect and designer; when displayed, it echoes his design and its Japanese influences. Book Six — Le Corbusier — is a cube book of Fabriano paper and resembles a white concrete box; its page structure is adapted from Corbu’s internal construction plans with mezzanine floors. Book Seven — Mies van der Rohe — consists of a concertina of double Perspex pages linked with fishing line and containing digital photo images of Chicago taken by the artist; it can be manipulated to form various displays, with multiplying reflections suggesting the spread of the architect’s influence on twentieth-century cityscapes. Book Eight — Pei — is a folding triangular paged book made of Perspex and Canson paper, linked with fishing line; when displayed, the pyramid pays homage to Pei’s dome over the entrance to the Louvre. Book Nine — Libeskind — echoes the architect’s intentionally disorienting Jewish museum in Berlin; a slanted rectangular box book, made of kangaroo vellum and scored aluminum, presents its text in a way intentionally difficult to access and read. Book Ten — Zaha Hadid — consists of organic shapes and patterns on a folded pages construction of Arches paper mounted on PVC; when displayed, the book takes on a shape that echoes that of Hadid’s architectural designs.

Additional commentary and images for Ten Books of Architecture (2017) can be found here.

Exhibitions and collections:

2006 version was exhibited in Books.06, Ten and Beyond, Noosa Regional Gallery, 22 September – 22 October 2006 and was purchased from this exhibition by a private collector.
2012 version commissioned by The Pratt Institute, New York. The Collections on View at the Brooklyn Campus of the Pratt Institute and online, May – August 2013. Image published in 500 Handmade Books, Lark Publishers USA, September 2013.
2013 version commissioned by the State Library of Queensland, Brisbane.
2017 version commissioned by Books On Books Collection.

Bookmarking Book Art – William Cordova

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untitled (george jackson/miguel hernandez) (1996-2011)

William Cordova

Books, photos, stone; two 14-foot stacks of books. Installation view from yawar malku (royalty, abduction & exile) at La Conservera – Centro de Arte Contemporáneo, Ceutí (Murcia), Spain, 2011; Artwork © William Cordova, courtesy of Sikkema Jenkins & Co., New York.

Here is a large-scale book installation that sharply challenges those who, objecting to books’ repurposing for art, would cite Milton: “he who destroys a good book kills reason itself”. Each 14-foot stack consists of a single title; one of Soledad Brother: The Prison Letters of George Jackson and the other of The Prison Poems by Miguel Hernández. For each column, Cordova has hollowed out a number of books to cover wooden shelves affixed to the wall and tightly fitted other books between the shelves to create the appearance of an uninterrupted stack of books. In making the bookshelf tower vertically and making the books as unreadable as bricks, he memorializes the two men and thoughts they expressed.

Acknowledging the influence of the shape of the Great Mosque of Córdoba and also Inca architecture in Peru where he grew up, Cordova elaborates in an interview with Lori Salmon in the exhibition catalogue:

Pillars/foundations are often designed to resist lateral forces. Columns also transmit any weight above and redistribute down below through compression. The content within the said titles inform the context of these pillars, antennas, and ephemeral monuments.

While the lives of Jackson and Hernández played out in different countries, their deaths in prison, the former’s letters and the latter’s laments drive side by side through the “pillars, antennas and ephemeral monuments”. In the context of mid-2020 protests against systemic racism and fascism, they could just as well be a pair of fuses.

Bookmarking Book Art – Alicia Martín

2020/07/172020/09/24Books On Books1 Comment

Alicia Martín’s series of installations called Biografías has been frequently noted across the Web — Designverb (2009), Crooked Brains (2010), SFCB Blog (2011), Huffington Post (2012), Inhabitat (2012), My Modern Met (2012, 2013), Arte Al Límite (2014), TiraBUZón (2014), El Cultural (2014, 2015) — but Nicola Mariani’s 2013 interview with Alicia Martín is the most useful entrée to this book artist and her work. The most telling insight from the artist elicited by Mariani is this:

Las intervenciones en la calle son de impacto visual, provocan curiosidad, sorpresa y la necesidad de llevársela en el móvil, en el iPad … y compartirla…. Son efímeras, por un tiempo asaltan al que va por la calle sin dejarle indiferente, la escultura “real” es la sensación que ha quedado en cada una de las personas y en la manera de recordarla, pensarla, contarla…. Una vez que se desmontan sólo queda en la memoria del que las ha vivido. Como cuando se lee un libro.

The interventions in the street have a visual impact, provoke curiosity, surprise and the need to capture it on smartphones, on iPads … and share it…. The installations are ephemeral, striking the passers-by in a brief moment allowing no indifference; the “real” sculpture is the feeling that remains in each of them, the way they remember it, think it, tell it…. Once the installations are dismantled, they remain only in the memory of those who have lived them. Like when you read a book

When I came to The Hague in June 2015, too many months passed before I visited Lidy Schoonens, owner of a bookshop devoted to book art, book arts and calligraphy, and one of the founder of the Leiden Book Arts Fair. In her shop on the fourth floor of the early 20th-century house on Johan van Oldenbarneveltlaan, I found myself sitting across from one of the orchestrators of Alicia Martín’s visit to construct her installation for the Paper Biennial 2012 at The Hague’s Meermanno Museum — an experience that put a “real” Martín sculpture in her memory. With her help, I was able to find these images of the installation.

Biografías (2012)

Alicia Martín

Photo: Courtesy of Lidy Schoonens

Biografías (2012)

Alicia Martín

Photos © Ed Jansen 2012.

Lidy described how the community quickly filled large dumpster bins with old books otherwise destined to be thrown away. Martín proceeded to manipulate and attach them to a wire frame, leaving their open pages to flutter and give sound to the cascade. By virtue of its here-today-gone-tomorrow status and its metaphoric metamorphosis of books into a torrent of now barely accessible information, Biografías reminds the viewer of the ephemerality of what appears to be permanent and urges “living” such moments of art to store the sight and sound in memory — or YouTube.

Biographías in Cordobá (2009).

In 2020, the Centro Galego de Arte Contemporánea in Santiago da Compostela has celebrated its Covid-19 reopening with another of Martín’s works — Biblioteca IX (1998) — in an exhibition entitled “Wonder Women: Women Artists in the CGAC Collection”. More of Martín’s work can be found on Mutual Art and in the series of exhibitions listed at Photography-Now.com.

Books On Books Collection – Jim Clinefelter

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A Throw of the Snore Will Surge the Potatoes: John M. Bennett meets Stéphane Mallarmé (1998)

A Throw of the Snore Will Surge the Potatoes: John M. Bennett meets Stéphane Mallarmé (1998)
Jim Clinefelter
Saddle-stitched with staples, card and pink end sheets over twelve sheets of copier paper, H280 x W215 mm. Acquired from John M. Bennett, 8 July 2020.
Photos: Books On Books Collection.

Clinefelter’s is not the first parody or spoof of Mallarmé’s Un Coup de Dés Jamais N’Abolira le Hasard. That claim belongs to a nineteenth-century Australian poet and aficionado of Mallarmé’s poetry — Christopher Brennan. Brennan’s Prose-Verse-Poster-Algebraic-Symbolico-Riddle Musicopoematographoscope appeared in manuscript in 1897 but wasn’t published until 1981.

With images from a reprint of an early Sears Roebuck Catalogue and drawing on John M. Bennett‘s poetry as well as Un Coup de Dés, Clinefelter composed his book on a borrowed Macintosh SE — the late twentieth-century substitute for penmanship. Mallarmé only thought of having some images from his friend Odilon Redon separated from the text Un Coup de Dés. Clinefelter’s sense of fun and close attention to the original led him to integrate those Sears images throughout with the text to mimic Mallarmé’s textual and typographic road signs. Notice in the third row of the photos above how the hands holding pencils point toward lines (or perhaps enclose the lines between them like single quotation marks) and how the figure of the man’s head with directional arrows indicates the order or path in which the text should be read.

Clinefelter’s text, which draws on Bennett’s boisterous poems, pokes fun at the original’s emphasis on sonority even at the expense of semantic or syntactic clarity. It also pokes fun at some of the lines that have challenged readers and translators alike:

LE MAÎTRE surgi inférant de cette conflagration à ses pieds de l’horizon unanime que se prépare s’agite et mêle au poing qui l’étreindrait … becomes

“THE MASTER knees inferring from this conflagration drips there as soft threatens the unique clam”

and cadavre par le bras écarté du secret qu’il détient … becomes

“corpse mud the arm”.

For their parody, Clinefelter and Bennett may have to apply for honorary Australian citizenship. It seems that, starting with Christopher Brennan, the Australians cannot stop teasing Mallarmé. We have Chris Edwards’ A Fluke: A Mistranslation of Stéphane Mallarmé’s “Un Coup De Dés…” with Parallel French Pretext (2005) and John Tranter’s Desmond’s Coupé (2006). Parody, pastiche or spoof — Clinefelter’s and these other responses enrich the genre of Un Coup de Dés. Somehow in their exuberance they are all saying “yes” to the abyss or, at least, managing one more guffaw of the dice.

A Rohrshach Alphabet: Zwirn 4 (1999)

A Rohrshach Alphabet: Zwirn 4 (1999)
Jim Clinefelter
Stapled loose leaf, card covers. H280 x W211 mm. 27 folios. Twenty-six Rohrshach inkblots printed over BW copy of motor parts ordering catalogue. Acquired from Zubal Books, 15 August 2022.
Photos: Books On Books Collection.

If the juxtaposition of the alphabet with the utterly unrelated pages of an engine parts catalogue has not disabused you of your pattern-seeking hopes, do not let approximation of the letter A resurrect them.

Like the letter A, several other letters of the alphabet have that characteristic of bilateral symmetry (H, I, M, O, T, U, V, W and X). Occasionally, Clinefelter lets it slip through (as with T), but in general, his zaniness will not allow it (as with the “blotted” rear wheel for O).

This use of catalogue pages and mechanical parts finds some ancestry in Francis Picabia and the Dadaists. In 2015, there was a journal called 291. Its July-August cover was Picabia’s Here, This is Stieglitz / Faith and Love. The artist’s visual pun of substituting the mechanical diagram for the artist is less puzzling or disconcerting than Clinefelter’s visual puns in A Throw of the Snore. But then along came Henri Matisse Ceci n’est pas une pipe (1929) and later Marcel Broodthaers to layer on that filter of “huh?” before Clinefelter and other book artists began adding their take.

Francis Picabia, Ici, c’est ici Stieglitz, foi et amour. Cover of 291, No.1, 1915.

Clinefelter’s take on the complement and clash of image and text brings together two related but unrelated tools: the Rohrshach test and the parts catalogue. Both are tools for searching. One for the mind. One for machinery. It’s a jokey, subversive take on searches for meaning and order, for patterns and structures, in parts that may not add up. The alphabet, which is rooted in images, also serves for ordering things as well as for making meaning or making sense of the world. Or does it? What can you spell out with a Rohrshach alphabet? And what if your catalogue for ordering parts is incomplete and out of order?

For related but very different explorations of bilateral symmetry and the art of the fold, see Étienne Pressager’s Mis-en-pli (2016) and Pramod Chavan’s The Voice of the Yarn (2022), but not before reveling further in Clinefelter’s throwback to Dada.

Books On Books Collection – Jaz Graf

2020/07/102021/03/07Books On Books3 Comments

Trophic Avulsions (2016)

Trophic Avulsions (2016)
Jaz Graf
Cyanotype accordion book with thread drawing, paper lithography and laser engraving on wood. Closed: H6 x W8.5 x D1.0 inches; Open: W80 inches. Unique. Acquired from the artist, 14 March 2018. Photos: Books On Books Collection.

Graf has used satellite photos of various river deltas around the world to create the cyanotype prints in this work. The patterns from which are exposed come from paper litho prints made on fabric. The result is a blurring, softening yet “nearing” of the otherwise sharp, scientific and remote images normally viewed on digital screens or photographic paper. As Graf points out in her description, the word trophic “relates to an ecological concept of the trophic cascade, in which one action leads to another in an ecosystem, implying ideas of interconnectivity.”

That interconnectivity and the impact we have on “the separation of land from one area and its attachment to another”, which is what avulsion means, is implied by the streams of thread meandering across and off the panels of the accordion form from beginning to end. Even though the panels fold to fit within their laser-engraved birch panels, they vary in width, which breaks up the expected regularity of the accordion when it is extended. The engravings show a delta emptying into a desert and are mounted on wood blocks covered in muslin bearing the printed delta image made with paper lithography.

Thread drawing is a technique common to several outstanding works of book art: Jody Alexander’s Felix’s Notebook (2008), Marion Bataille’s Vues/Lues (2018), Dianna Frid’s Reversal (2009), Candace Hicks’ Composition (2009~), Helen Hiebert‘s Nebulae (2017), Shellie Holden’s Maps (2006), Lisa Kokin’s Partial History of Jewish Life in Modern Times (1997), Ines Seidel’s Changed Constitution (2015) and Mireille Vautier‘s Agenda (2001) among others. Graf’s handling of the technique and its combination with cyanotype printing and lithography in the treatment of her theme, though, make it distinctive and original.

The environmental focus of Trophic Avulsions places it in a well-loved tradition in book art. Other works by Graf, such as Mother Water (2018) below, would be comfortably at home in an exhibition with

Biography (2010) by Sarah Bryant, who creatively connects the human body’s elements with those of the periodic table to bear witness to our impact on the environment and vice versa;

the Ice Books series (2007-17) by Basia Irland, who selects local seeds and embeds them as “text” in a block of frozen river water, carved into the shape of a book to be released into the local river where it melts, releasing the seeds;

the Whorl series (2013- ongoing) by Jacqueline Rush Lee, who returns books to their botanical origins by sculpting books and inserting them into the cavity of a tree to allow time, changing weather conditions and insect activity to rewrite them into the shape of a whorl in a tree hollow;

Batterers (1996) by Denise Levertov, Kathryn Lipke and Claire Van Vliet, who combine Levertov’s powerful poem extending a metaphor of abuse to the earth with Lipke’s clay paperwork set into a wooden tray as the base of this sculptural book, whose pages Van Vliet makes unfold into a fiery landscape; or

Silent Spring Revisited (2016) by Chris Ruston, who uses her frequent visits to natural history museums to inspire works that blend science and art that highlight extinction and the interdependence of humans and nature.

If such an exhibition — a twentieth anniversary of Betty Bright’s 1992 “Completing the Circle: Artists’ Books on the Environment”? — were organized, Trophic Avulsions would be available to loan!

Mother Water (2018)
Laser-etched acrylic, cyanotype, porcelain
Dimensions variable (15 panels – each 14”x11”)
The river featured is Thailand’s Chao Praya. Photo: Courtesy of the artist.

Further Viewing

“Artist of the Week“, Jaffe Center for the Book Arts, Florida State University. 5 January 2020.

Books On Books Collection – Robin Price

2020/07/072025/07/06Books On BooksLeave a comment

as you continue (2012)

as you continue (2012)

Robin Price

Housed in acrylic tube, eight pages including letterpress printed colophon page, seven pages of USGS topographic maps inscribed with sumi ink by hand, bound with a small piece of Fabriano Tiziano green in Japanese side-stitch. H184 x W679.5 mm unfurled. Edition of approximately 65, of which this one is dated and initialed on 7 November 2012. Acquired from the artist, 25 March 2015. Photos: Books On Books Collection.

When as you continue first appeared, Jen Larson wrote of it in Multiple, Limited, Unique: Selections from the Permanent Collection of the Center for Book Arts (2011):

… this work serves as an elegant meditation and metaphor on the subject of life journeys — and orienting oneself in the midst of landscape or circumstance that can only be apprehended by survey and the will to move forward.

The year 2012 marked the centennial of composer and artist John Cage’s birth. An aficionado of “chance”, Robin Price revisited this work that had begun in December 2010 when she discovered on the Crown Point Press’ Magical-Secrets website the quotation by Cage. Cage had made this remark to Kathan Brown in 1989 after the Crown Point Press’ building was condemned following an earthquake. By chance, it now seemed fitting as a centenary birthday wish to this artistic master of “the purposeful use of chance and randomness”. Also by purposeful chance, Price turned to a technique that seemed entirely fitting for the work, its history and her personal perspective. Price writes:

… I took up the project anew and practiced writing on several different occasions, feeling dissatisfied with various trials. Eventually I found my way to writing with my left (non-dominant) hand as the most authentic expression I could bring to the content, as visualization of struggle, fear, and acceptance of imperfection.

Counting on Chance (2010)

Counting on Chance: 25 Years of Artists’ Books by Robin Price, Publisher,(2010)

Robin Price

Perfect bound. H305 x W229 mm. Acquired from the artist, 25 March 2015. Photos: Books On Books Collection.

The very covers of the book were created by chance operations. Generated solely on press using three of the four process color printing plates from the book’s interior via “make-ready”, areas of image were built up on the paper by repeatedly passing the sheets through the press, and consistently rotating the sheets prior to their feeding through ensured variation among the covers within the edition.

In addition to the theme core to Price’s art, Counting on Chance embodies another aspect key to her work: choice and collaboration. Published in conjunction with the exhibition held at Wesleyan University’s Davison Art Center, the volume includes a brilliant essay by Betty Bright, interview by Suzy Taraba and a catalogue raisonné prepared by Rutherford Witthus. Like choosing the right colors, the right combination of fonts, the right layout, the right weight and opacity of paper, and the right structure, Price’s choice of collaborators (or their choice of her) in her work and publishing is an artistic practice itself.

The Anatomy Lesson (2004)

The Anatomy Lesson: Unveiling the Fasciculus Medicinae (2004)

Joyce Cutler-Shaw

Housed in a custom-made, engraved stainless steel box (H370 x W326 x D44 mm), concertina binding co-designed with Daniel E. Kelm and Joyce Cutler-Shaw, produced at The Wide Awake Garage; twelve signatures of handmade cotton text paper, the central ten signatures each made up of one sheet H356 x W514 mm and one sheet H356 x W500 mm glued to the 14 mm margin of the first sheet, for a total of 96 pages, each measuring H356 x W253 mm.
Binding of leather covered boards (a hologram embedded in front cover) with an open spine, taped and sewn into a reinforcing concertina structure: H361 X W259 mm.
The hologram, produced by DuPont Authentication Systems, features an early eighteenth-century brass lancet. Edition of 50, of which this is a binder’s copy. Acquired from the binder, Daniel E. Kelm, 15 October 2018.

Generating two double-page spreads, one for the Fasciculus Medicinae on the left and Cutler-Shaw on the right, the foldout pages extend to 1016 mm.

Responding to the 1993 Smithsonian challenge to book artists to create a work in response to a scientific or technical work in the Dibner Library, Joyce Cutler-Shaw approached Price for assistance in creating a unique book based on Shaw’s response to the Fasciculus Medicinae (1495), the first printed book with anatomical illustrations. A decade later, Price was convinced to issue this 50-copy edition. In Counting On Chance, Betty Bright recounts the story behind this brilliant collaboration. Detail and additional images about the work can be found here.

This “edition of two”, as Peter Foolen has termed it, gives the reader/viewer slices of two much larger works. The first was a 320-page hardback edition of 750 copies, also entitled die wiese / the meadow but involving Marion Reissner for the concept and photography. Two copies of the special edition, signed and numbered, also included dried leaves that de vries selected from the 4000 square meters — the meadow — that is one of de vries’ most important works of art. In the Steigerwald near Eschenau, Germany, where they live, he and susanne de vries, his wife, started this work of nature’s sculpture in 1986. A peninsula anchored on the forest and surrounded by farmland, the meadow boasts a barrier of cultivated aspen and hedges. Within, a variety of shrubs, trees and wildflowers abound. A work of art in and of itself, it is also the source and palette for smaller works made of selections of leaves, arrays of briars and pressed vegetation. The dried juniper berries in juniperus communis signal that aspect of his art.

In small, juniperus communis reflects another important aspect: exhibitions and installations.

infinity in finity (2013)

infinity in finity (2013)

herman de vries

H166 x W210 mm. Edition of 1000. Acquired from Éditions incertain sens, 27 June 2020. Photos: Books On Books Collection.

In the Books On Books Collection, infinity in finity occupies a mid-point between die weise|the meadow and argumentstellen. Whereas die weise|the meadow draws its art directly from nature or the artist’s interaction with nature, argumentstellen draws its art from the artist’s interaction with a book of philosophy and his visual translation/illustration of it through the book arts. Except for the photo of herman de vries as naturalist-cum-naturist, infinity in finity belongs more to that side of his work that focuses on wordplay and the book arts.

The single photo and the phrase “infinity in finity” point more toward intangible, abstract nature rather than the tangible nature of a meadow and handful of juniper berries. The strand under the artist’s feet and the repeated phrase evoke the lines of Blake’s “Auguries of Innocence”:

To see a World in a Grain of Sand 

And a Heaven in a Wild Flower 

Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand 

And Eternity in an hour

Grafix Centrum Poligrafii (Gdańsk, Poland) has precisely executed the genius of the design that aligns the repeated phrase across the double-page spread, into and out of the gutter, and sends it off the top, bottom and fore edges. The meaning of the words and form of the book align perfectly. The reader/viewer holds infinity in the finite form of a book held between two hands.

argumentstellen 1968 / 2003 (2003)

argumentstellen 1968 / 2003 (de wittgenstein — tractatus — ) (2003)

herman de vries

The first date 1968 is the year the artwork was conceived and drawn; the second date, the year it was published. H296 x W210 mm. Edition of 1250. Acquired from Éditions incertain sens, 27 June 2020. Photos: Books On Books Collection.

Argumentstellen (German for “arguing” or “making an argument”) roots itself even more in abstraction, allusion and the book arts than infinity in finity. Other than the title and colophon, there are no words in argumentstellen. Still, the little text on which it relies looms large.

The Dutch naar and French de translate as “after”; so argumentstellen is “after Wittgenstein — tractatus — 2. 0131 …” Here are English translations for the text from section 2.0131 of Wittgenstein’s Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus:

From Wittgenstein’s Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus,
Side-by-Side-by-Side Edition, curated by Kevin C. Klement, Department of Philosophy, University of Massachusetts – Amherst

Unlike most paintings and prints entitled “after [fill in the blank]” — but like many instances of reverse-ekphrasis in book art — argumentstellen is simultaneously a visual translation and interpretation of referenced text, not another artist’s visual work. Rather than the ekphrastic text/poem that proceeds from the visual or sculptural work of art, this is visual book art that proceeds from philosophical text. On each rich, thick, white page, the black dot (the “point in space”, full stop or period?) appears once but in different places from page to page. Against the texture and color of the page, each black dot almost performs a trompe l’oeil that surrounds it with ghostly text — implying that it marks the space or place where a statement or argument occurs, which differs from place to place, from perspective to perspective.

In the same year as the drawing for this work occurred, so did that for the lines (1968/1995). De vries’ comments on the lines shed light on argumentstellen as well as return our thoughts to walking into the ocean or through the meadow:

the position of a single line in the surface determines our experience of these surfaces, so that with another position of the line, an extension or a shortening, our experience of the surface is changed.

like every primary picture element, the line has its own unique effect.
a point, for example, determines the space around it, creates an area of tension out of it. a line does that too, but it is clearer that the line divides the area.

lines are like dams in water. the eye must overcome it like an obstacle.
but it can also go around, flow. Another option is to follow the line, walk on the embankment and notice the changes in the area. because the place where the eye is located is a point of perception in relation to the surface.
in this way the line is a series of 'arguments'. Walking along, around or over here means changing your perspective and viewpoint. — herman de vries. Accessed 30 June 2020.

At which William Blake and those other Romantics — those ambler poets — John Clare, Samuel Coleridge and William Wordsworth must be nodding and smiling.

Books On Books Collection – Brian Larosche

2020/07/032023/04/14Books On BooksLeave a comment

Un Coup de 3Dés (2012)

Un Coup de 3Dés (2012)

Brian Larosche

H500 x W350 mm. Edition of 200, of which this is #162. Acquired from the artist, 15 April 2019.

In size, Larosche’s Un Coup de Dés outdoes most other versions and homage — except those that are installations. The large black cover suggests a dark movie screen on which Larosche’s version of the poem will play out in 3D. But why 3D? Trying to read Un Coup de Dés while wearing a pair of 3D glasses challenges the eyes’ patience just as much as the poem’s ambiguities challenge the mind’s. Within the Coup de Dés genre, there is a necessary strain of strained humor. Without it, art runs the risk of taking us too seriously.

L: Ultimate History Project; R: The_National_Archives_UK. Accessed 27 June 2020.

Confirming this joking intention behind his version, Larosche commented to Books On Books:

I originally handmade the book so that it was to worn on the nose like a large pair of glasses, which was another practical joke because the letters were too close to read, as in so 3D that it was literally in your face. — Brian Larosche, 2 April 2020.

Even with puns and slapstick there is often a point. The anaglyphic print technique and sheer size of Larosche’s version draw attention to Mallarmé’s sculptural play with type size and layout on a 2D surface as well as the poem’s spatial metaphors that align with it. In Mallarmé’s original, the staggering and dispersal of lines and single words on the page buttress, and are buttressed by, the word images of a roiling sea, shipwreck and constellation. Other artists with other techniques have drawn attention to that sculptural play and those spatial metaphors: Marcel Broodthaers‘ superimposed black bars, Michalis Pichler‘s and Cerith Wyn Evans‘ cut-outs, Sammy Engramer‘s sonograms sculpted in PVC and Eric Zboya‘s computer graphic “translation”.

Other artists have also poked serious fun at Un Coup de Dés and each others’ homage. Jim Clinefelter teases the sonority of the poem with his A Throw of the Snore Will Surge the Potatoes (1998). With her Rubik’s cube version (2005), Aurélie Noury needles the poem’s and poet’s puzzle pose. With their piano-roll versions, Rainier Lericolais (2009) and Pichler (2016) pick on Broodthaers (1969) as well as Mallarmé (1897) for their spatial metaphors and, in Mallarme’s case, his assertions of musicality. In Rodney Graham’s version (2011), Popeye substitutes for le Maître as the ship’s captain.

Larosche’s perceptively humorous rendering of Un Coup de Dés has earned it a secure perch among the other birds of the homage feather, and the use of 3D glasses seems to invite another layer of homage from artists interested in virtual reality headgear and augmented reality devices.

Books On Books Collection – Rodney Graham

2020/07/032022/04/24Books On BooksLeave a comment

Poème : “Au Tatoueur” (2011)

Poème : “Au Tatoueur” (2011)
Rodney Graham
Sewn soft cover. H320 x W250 mm, 16 pages. Translated from English by Philip Hunt. Edition of 250, of which this is #124. Acquired from Stefan Schuelke Fine Books.
Photos: Books On Books Collection.

As with many of the homage to Un Coup de Dés, the subtitle here matters. For Bennequin, it was “Homage” with it missing “m” from the French; for Broodthaers, “Image”; for Engramer, “Wave”; for Pichler, “Sculpture” and “Musique”; for Zboya, “Translations”. Graham’s subtitle, being in quotation marks, indicates that what follows is a missive, not a form. The missive addressed to a local tattoo artist was arranged à la Mallarmé and described an image of Popeye that Graham wanted. But the twist that makes Graham’s version work is the translation of the instructions into French and their publication in the 1913 format of Mallarmé’s poem. This is an intricate “set-up”. In a way, it is analogous to Mallarmé’s careful attention to the positioning of words and lines, the kind of mise-en-scène that characterizes much of Graham’s photography and painting.

The set-ups extend across time and works as well. Au Tatoueur inspired Tattooed Man On Balcony 2018, the story of which is told here. Further evidence of Graham’s humor in book art and intricate set-ups can be found in White Shirt (for Mallarmé) Spring 1993 (1992), [La Véranda] (1989) and The System of Landor’s Cottage. A Pendant to Poe’s Last Story (1987), all at the Tate Modern.

Alphabetic Codes (2005)

Windows on the World (2005)

Beautiful One Day,Blown Away the Next (2011)

Tsunami (2011)

Paper, Scissors, Uluru (2013)

The Legacy of Absence and Silence (2016)

The Future of an Illusion (2017)

Ten Books of Architecture (2017)

Further Reading

Further Reading

Further Reading

A Throw of the Snore Will Surge the Potatoes: John M. Bennett meets Stéphane Mallarmé (1998)

A Rohrshach Alphabet: Zwirn 4 (1999)

Further Reading

Trophic Avulsions (2016)

Further Viewing

as you continue (2012)

Counting on Chance (2010)

The Anatomy Lesson (2004)

Further Reading

An Edition of Two (2014)

die wiese|the meadow & juniperus communis

infinity in finity (2013)

argumentstellen 1968 / 2003 (2003)

Further Reading

Un Coup de 3Dés (2012)

Further Reading

Poème : “Au Tatoueur” (2011)

Further Reading

Beautiful One Day,
Blown Away the Next (2011)