The entry on Transforming Hate by Clarissa Sligh, her first work acquired for the Books On Books Collection, was posted in September 2020, just over a month from an election that offered a step away from hate, prejudice, and bigotry. Unfortunately insurrection brushed the offer aside. Four years later, another election, and reactionism and revanchism seem to have the upper hand. In such times, Clarissa Sligh’s book art, photographs, and recorded lectures provide a tonic of bittersweet hope. You cannot help but be struck by the persistent but wary humanity of the art and the artist.
Voyage(r) (2000)
Voyage(r): A Tourist Map to Japan (2000) Clarissa Sligh Perfectbound paperback. H184 x W127 mm. [144] pages. Edition of 1000. Acquired from Hudson River Books, 11 February 2021. Photos: Books On Books Collection.
Artist’s description: “In this diary-like artist’s book, Sligh recounts a trip to Japan through a thoughtfully constructed montage of photography, texts, and abstract gestural paintings. In personal and poetic musings, the author ponders her relationship to Japanese culture, both as a first time visitor and as an African American woman. Beautifully printed in blue and black duotones, the book comes in a cloth bag.”
From the first wordless illustration onwards in Kitty Crowther’s Va faire un tour, you don’t have to know French to know that the book’s title means imperatively “take a walk” — or maybe even “take a hike” — in English. There is no mistaking the tone of Maman’s character nor the reaction of her little one stomping along, circling the globe, even under bodies of water, oblivious to characteristic scenery and inhabitants.
The Circus of Dr. Lao (1982) Charles G. Finney (text) Claire Van Vliet (design and illustration) Hardback, cased in cotton cloth over boards, head and tail bands, sewn. H x W mm. 9 1/4 x 12 inches 140 pages. Edition of 2000, of which this is #996. Acquired from BlueMamaBooks, 9 February 2025. Photos: Books On Books Collection.
If you have read Nathaniel West’s The Day of the Locust (1939) or Flannery O’Connor’s A Good Man Is Hard to Find (1955), Charles Finney’s novella illustrated by Claire Van Vliet will seem only marginally disturbing. If you have seen Tod Browning’s Freaks (1932), it will seem more than tame. Somewhere in between is the appropriate trigger warning for The Circus of Dr. Lao (1982).
Finney drops Dr. Lao’s circus of P.T. Barnum-esque carnival sideshows, a bestiary of distorted mythological creatures and exaggerated stereotypes, into the Arizona backwater of Abalone. The denizen of Abalone and their reactions — from gullibility, lubricious fascination, racist hazing, and violence to shrugs and a smug return to unexceptional normality — are the targets of Finney’s fevered satire. Van Vliet mirrors the range with her illustrations printed from original relief etchings and her selection of contrasting Plantin and Victoria display types.
“Book of Hours was designed and created by Julie Chen & Keri Miki-Lani Schroeder. This long-distance collaboration, between California and Texas, took place during the 2020-21 pandemic. The format of Book of Hours is known as a blow book, a historical structure originally designed as a magic trick which allows the presenter to show completely different visual sequences of pages within the same book. … The first and last sequences on each side of the book were designed by the two artists collaboratively, and the other eight sequences were designed individually by each artist. …” — Colophon.
Book of Hours (2021)
Book of Hours (2021) Julie Chen & Keri Miki-Lani Schroeder Box: H283 x W220 x D51 mm. Book: H279 x W216 x D48 mm. Artists’ book Structure #/88 Julie Chen 8 October 2024. Photos: Courtesy of artists, and Books On Books Collection.
As with all blow books, hold the Book of Hours‘ spine in your left hand, place your right thumb at the upper end of the fore edge, and flick through the pages. A set of sequenced images appear from beginning to end. But start again, shifting the pressure of your thumb to a lower position on the fore edge, and a different set of sequenced images shows up in the riffling. Turn the book over on its horizontal axis, and yet another series of sequenced images become available. To distinguish one side of the Book of Hours from the other, Chen and Schroeder have designated one side as “ante meridiem” on its title page and the other side as “post meridiem”.
The Red Thread (1988) Tord Nygren Hardback, casebound, sewn. H305 x W 215 mm. [30] including pastedowns. Acquired from Better World Books, April 2025. Photos: Books On Books Collection.
The Swedish expression “den röda tråden” translates best as “the common thread”, the thing that links together otherwise disparate things and experiences. The literal translation, however, works best for Tord Nygren’s Den Röda Tråden (1987), leaving us to follow the red thread that the clown offers to the children on the front cover. The thread wraps around to the pastedown and across the fly leaf chased by the runaway carousel horse …
Three Cats (1992) Anne Brouillard Casebound, illustrated paper over boards, sewn, dustjacket. H280 x W223 mm. [28] pages. Acquired from private seller, 27 August 2023. Photos: Books On Books Collection.
This wordless picture book tells a humorous brief tale of three curious cats and three insouciant fish. It marks an early stage in Anne Brouillard’s journey from picture book artist to book artist.
Inscription: The Journal of Material Text, Issue 5 (2025)
Although Theodore Roethke had a woman in mind when he wrote “The shapes a bright container can contain!”, the phrase readily comes to mind for this issue of Inscription once you’re past the difficult-to-open-up cardboard packaging. Not that you should rip through and discard it. The clues to proceed patiently are the label “recto” on one edge of the box and the page cut from a book and pasted on the box’s top. Is “recto” some sort of “this side up” label? If so, it seems topsy-turvy. Recto (or right-hand) pages are usually have odd-numbered, but the pasted-down book page is numbered 20. Wait a second; those random colored rectangles have been printed over the book page as if meant to draw attention to the “gridness” of the apartment blocks. Maybe this box is meant to be preserved and framed (after all, Toulouse-Lautrec drew on cardboard).
Amorous Embrace (2023) Suzanne Moore and Titus Lucretius Carus (trans. A.E. Stallings) Artist’s manuscript, stub bound to stone cover, tinted thread, gold leaf, kozo, paste paper. H220 x W148 mm. 12 pages. Unique. Acquired from the artist, 5 February 2024. Photos: Books On Books Collection.
Sometime in the first century BCE, the Roman poet Lucretius wrote the didactic epic De rerum natura (The Nature of Things). It celebrates the atomistic physics and philosophy that Epicurus and his followers recorded two hundred plus years before in thirty-seven volumes. Imagine the determination to press that Greek vision of the world from atoms to the cosmos into six volumes of Latin poetry. We’ll have to await further papyrology applied to the cinders of the Herculaneum library of scrolls and hope that it reveals more scraps of the Greek’s Περὶ φύσεως (On Nature). Only then will we know whether Lucretius based his poem directly on them.
recomp (2013-23) Cathryn Miller Hinged and clasped diptych, housing an altered book, explanatory booklet, and loose colophon. Unique. Acquired from Vamp & Tramp Booksellers, 2025. Photos: Books On Books Collection.
Recomp (2013-2023) is a collaboration with a colony of bald-faced hornets. Having reviewed Stephen Collis and Jordan Scott’s decomp (2013), their artists’ book devised by exposing several copies of Darwin’s On the Origin of Species to the elements, Cathryn Miller followed suit and hung her reviewer’s copy of decomp in a tree. Over time, the wind, rain, and snow sent the book to the forest floor where it fell apart. Hornets had done their part in its decomposition, nibbling away at its edges and weakening the structure. Their conversion of the book into cellulose for their nest was also the start of their artistic partnership with Miller. Eventually the nest, too, became prey to the elements or marauders and fell and broke apart on the ground. Miller and photographer husband David recorded all this and gathered up the book fragments and broken nest.
These are Bruno Munari’s words that I share. I play and I have fun with my papers and my colours, but it is a job and a job, even if enjoyable, is a serious thing. My notes on image diaries are serious. A collection of thoughts translated into images, that are daily, just like a diary, “annotated” on nearly three hundred pages. I use the stencil technique with a monochromatic press, an imaginary thread connects them and creates a long history that develops, touching on events that have hit me in a particular way. It is my imaginary world, but at the same time, very real.Paper, card, fabric, needle, thread, colours and gouges are the materials that allow me to work and to leave my fantasy and creativity free. I have one very small study, but it is sufficient. It is welcoming, full of books, with a great ceiling window, three tables, two chalcographic presses and one press. When I am sitting in my workplace, I manage to isolate myself in my world. I can stay seated for hours without the passing time weighing on me, making me happy with this choice of life. — Eleonora Cumer
libro catalogo con interventi manuale (2019)
libro catalogo con interventi manuale / “book catalogue with manual interventions” (2019) Eleonora Cumer Sewn booklet, various papers including photographic, gold leaf, thread, mesh, string, wax. H200 x W220 (variable) mm. [16] pages. Unique. Acquired from the artist,. Photos: Books On Books Collection.
Many catalogues of individual artist’s books aim to be works of art themselves. Some attempt this with fine press production and limiting the edition, which sometimes succeeds. Some embody the very material and techniques that the artist used to create the items represented in their pages. Eleonora Cumer’s libro catalogo con interventi manuale / “book catalogue with manual interventions” (2019) is an extreme and stunning example of the latter. It is extreme because it is unique, not a limited edition. It lacks any identifying captions or list of works (the captions below appear only as a convenience for this entry in the Books On Books Collection). Libro catalogo con interventi manuale stands on its own as a stunning work of book art.
As the richly textured and gold-leafed cover turns, notice how Cumer presents the image of the catalogue’s first work: Parole non dette, frasi in sospeso / “Unspoken words, unfinished sentences” (2018). Split and pasted on two sides of the first folio, the glossy photograph of Parole non dette reunites with precise registration in the center of the folded folio.
When the right half of Parole non dette turns, the second work — controcorrente /”against the current” (2010) — comes into view.
Although pasted on one side of the folio, the photograph of controcorrente splits in two at the fold, the left side and right side precisely registered with one another on either side of the fold. This is subtle. First an image reunited and aligned by virtue of cut and fold, then second an image separated but aligned by virtue of cut and fold. We may be long used to how juxtaposition works artistically on the flat surface of collage or the multiple surfaces of assemblage. Cumer teaches this afresh with the flat and multiple surfaces of book structure as well as with the materials and techniques of bookmaking.
The next three works appear in a fold-out insert attached to the stub of a textured folio that also supports a brown paper folio following the insert. The colorful città / “city” (2018) reflects how Cumer’s palette and sculptural repertoire extends beyond the black and white leporello of controcorrente. The threads sewn in parallel over the photograph of città not only reflect another part of Cumer’s material repertoire, they also enact another part of her sculptural repertoire in the way they work with, in, and across the photographs and folios.
When the image of città / “city” folds out to the right, photographs of two more works appear: desiderio di … arte / “desire for … art” (2012) and illusione – delusione / “illusion – delusion” (2012). The image of desiderio highlights Cumer’s use of the flag book structure, although there is structurally much more to that work’s composition. The parallel threads that extended over the photo of cittá on the other side of the fold-out now pierce the photograph of illusione – delusione.
The next work to appear — il libro segreto /”the secret book” (2018) — carries on with the intervention and penetration by thread. The patterns formed by the thread reflect and extend those which can be seen in the photograph of il libro segreto. Leaping out of the photograph and penetrating the supporting brown paper folio, the thread introduces a new motif that will recur in just a few more pages.
The spread presenting the next work — fili intrecciati / “twisted threads” (2018) — reverts to the split aligned photo as used with controcorrente, but here the division comes at the center of the double-page spread. Off to the left side, the abstract figure in stitched thread echoes the technique used in fili intrecciati itself and starts another recurring motif in the catalogue.
No intervention occurs in the photograph of cancellazioni e riscruttare / “cancellations and rewritings” (2018). No cuts, no folds, no threads, but on the facing verso page, Cumer brings to life one of the cancelled/rewritten objects that can be seen in the photograph. Just as in fili intrecciati, the thread-bound bundle of strips of cut text has leapt from two dimensions to three dimensions, highlighting again how Cumer uses the flat and multiple surfaces of book structure as well as the materials and techniques of bookmaking to re-teach us how juxtaposition works artistically on the flat surface of collage and the multiple surfaces of assemblage.
Following but elaborating on the previous spreads’ motif of juxtaposing an extract of the work with a photograph of the work, Cumer places a red-threaded square of tartalan across from the cut and misaligned photograph of la poesia dell’universo / “the poetry of the universe” (2018). The cut photograph is split by a red stitch that divides in two itself.
Here is where the variation on the two dimensional becoming three dimensional introduced by il segreto libro recurs. Defying the gutter’s separation of the tartalan sample from the whole work and the severing of the photo on the recto page, threads from the sample cross the gutter, fall across one half of the photograph, and link up with the severing stitch. The thicker thread of the severing stitch passes under the other half of the photograph to exit from it on the right and fall across the image of red threads similarly exiting the work itself. The ways in which this double-page spread speaks to the self-reflexive nature of book art and the paradoxical relationship of art to what it re-presents are remarkable.
The final work in the catalogue — visioni urbani / “urban visions”(2015) — resides in the Books On Books Collection. More about it can be found here. Threads do not make an appearance in visioni urbani, but their triangular appearance here does reflect on urbanivisioni. If the space to the left of the red stitching can be counted as a page, this is a “three-page” spread echoing the three-way split of the photo of the work, which echoes the tripartite physical structure of the work itself.
In the colophons of several earlier works, Cumer has drawn attention to this practice in libro catalogo of recycling her works. She labels them as part of projects “born of work with old books”, “born from her artist’s books”, and “born of her work with old theater posters”. Three of them are explored below, and three others can be found in a previous entry on her work.
PRESENTE/OTASSA (2015)
PRESENTE/OTASSA / “Present / Tax” (2015) Eleonora Cumer Sewn booklet. H287 x W204 mm. [8] including cover. Edition of 50, of which this is #19. Acquired from the artist, . Photos: Books On Books Collection.
Whether read as otassa presente or presente otassa, the translation of this sewn booklet’s title comes out the same: a present tax. The phrase in the background — usa e getta — stamped over ghosted images of cutout book pages means “disposable” and is used as the title of a 2014 work. The ghosted book pages come from the Italian edition of Mario Puzo’s last novel Fools Die, a Hollywood/Wall Street potboiler. The front cover’s sealed plastic envelope containing cut-up sewing patterns, buttons, thread and an old photograph of a little girl wearing a knit shawl and sitting in a white wicker chair makes the intriguing juxtapositions only more so. What do these collaged and assembled elements have to do with one another?
Some clarity dawns with phrases on the interior pages: gli anni passano (“years go by”), i ricordi riaffiorano (“memories come back”), and nitide immagini del passato (“clear images of the past). “Disposable” alludes not only to the novel whose pages wallpaper the cover and interior pages but also to Cumer’s work of the preceding year — USA E GETTA (2014), a series of unique altered books. The series is the source of the images inside PRESENTE/OTASSA. Each shows a hollowed-out book with an object held in place between clear plates — a picture frame (empty except for the reflection of the foreground — the rest of the work it comes from), a stuffed toy, and a broken dress-up doll. Things of the past that in general are disposable (like sewing patterns no longer needed or broken dolls) nevertheless come back as clear images: a tax on the present.
radici/ in memoria dei miei genitori (2015)
radici/ in memoria dei miei genitori / “roots/ in memory of my parents” (2015) Eleonora Cumer Sewn booklet with stitching. H287 x W206 mm. [8] pages. Edition of 50, of which this is #11. Acquired from the artist, . Photos: Books On Books Collection.
The theme of memory continues in radici/ in memoria dei miei genitori / “roots/ in memory of my parents” (2015) but perhaps more poignantly than in presente/otassa. Drawing on the previous works moltitudine e solitudine/ “multitude and solitude” (2013) and no time no space (2015), the booklet also evokes Cumer’s passion for textile and fabric art. The small image of a sewing box in the lower left hand corner of the central spread may speak to a parental source of that passion, but the words on the other spreads — recise and solitudine e un grande dolore (“severed or sever or cut” and “loneliness and a great sorrow”) — turn that central spread into a collage of loss almost more so than a collection of memories. It is one of the more somber works by Cumer in the Books On Books Collection.
immagini (2015)
immagini / ‘“images” (2015) Eleonora Cumer Sewn booklet with stitching on the last page. H287 x W206 mm. [8] pages. Edition of 50, of which this is #20. Photos: Books On Books Collection.
The overlaid phrases immagini ritagliate, immagini scomposte, and immagini cucite can be translated as “cut out images”, “distorted images”, and “stitched images”, respectively. On the cover of the unreadable book displayed, the words FINZIONE / “fiction” and REALTÁ / “reality” are spelled in reverse. As in libro catalogo, there is self-reflexivity at play here. Cumer plays with the word ritagliate by printing ri in black and tagliate in white, creating two verbs — ritagliate (“cut out”) and tagliate (“cut”), which apply to the word itself, the technique in the poster displayed, and the fragment of it blown up on the double-page spread. By blurring the image on the recto page of the second double-page spread, she makes the spread play out the meaning of scomposte — “distorted”. And in the third spread, she playfully stitches over the word cucite — “stitched” — which comments not only on the word but also on the stitched unreadable book on the verso page.
*Giocare è una cosa seria! I bambini di oggi sono gli adulti di domani aiutiamoli a crescere liberi da stereotipi aiutiamoli a sviluppare tutti i sensi aiutiamoli a diventare più sensibili. Un bambino creativo è un bambino felice!
“Playing is a thing! Today’s children are tomorrow’s adults. Let’s help them grow up free from stereotypes. Let’s help them develop all their senses. Let’s help them become more sensitive. A creative child is a happy child!” Bruno Munari, on occasion of 1986
Bruno Munari, 1986, on occasion of a Children’s Workshop Laboratory, prompted by a series of seminars promoted in 1977 by Franco Russoli, Superintendent of the Pinacoteca di Brera.
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