THE ART OF THE BOOK
Thirteenth annual exhibition of handmade artist books, altered books and book-related materials
THE ART OF THE BOOK Thirteenth annual exhibition of handmade artist books, altered books and book-related materials
Robert Adams Rhiannon Alpers Tor Archer Doug Beube Renee Bott ValĂŠrie Buess Sara Burgess Macy Chadwick
Brian Dettmer Guy Diehl Casey Gardner Jaz Graf Andrew Hayes Susannah Hays Charles Hobson Rodger Jacobsen
Lisa Kokin Linda Mueller Emily Payne Brian Singer Dolph Smith Tamar Stone Barbara Wildenboer Audrey Wilson
THE ART OF THE BOOK
Thirteenth annual exhibition of handmade artist books, altered books and book-related materials
May 3 to May 31, 2018 Reception for the artists: Saturday, May 12, 5:30 to 7:30 Front Cover: Renee Bott, Durer’s Deer, 2018, acrylic paint, ink, color pencil, on book pages and canvas, 30 x 30 in Back Cover: Rodger Jacobsen, The Reader, 2017, cast bronze, 9.5 x 8 x 5 in Photo Credits Robert Adams: Black Cat Studio, Jay Daniel Tor Archer: Don Felton Macy Chadwick: Bernard Uhl Andrew Hayes: Steve Mann Charles Hobson: Alice Shaw Lisa Kokin: Lia Roozendaal Audrey Wilson: Chandler Mack
Direct inquiries to: Seager Gray Gallery 108 Throckmorton Avenue Mill Valley, CA 94941 415-384-8288 seagergray.com All rights reserved. Catalog can be purchased through the gallery for $20 plus handling and shipping. Email us at art@seagergray.com
Robert Adams Mill Valley, California
Robert Adams attended the Art Institute of Boston and spent 2 more years studying drawing and painting at the San Francisco Art Institute, also delving into ceramics and paint finishes. In order to frame his work, he got a job at a frame shop and eventually opened a framing business himself. Working with wood and tools inspired his interest in making 3 dimensionl works of his own. He has been in many ACC (American Craft Council) exhibitions and has shown in galleries across the country. He sources ideas from folk art, antique furniture and vintage objects, the hidden layers of paint and wear always speaking to him. These new works bring his drawings into 3 dimensions and showcase his reverence for early folk traditions. He was a participant in Seager Gray's 2018 Material Matters exhibition in March.
Robert Adams Sentinel, 2017 (left)
basswood, sugarpine, milk and Japan paint 26 x 15 x 12 in
The Thinker, 2017 (right)
basswood, sugarpine, milk and Japan paint 32 x 14 x 11 in
Rhiannon Alpers
A Thousand Starlings, 2016
letterpress and handbound artist book 7 x 5.75 x 1.25 in
Rhiannon Alpers San Francisco, California
This limited edition book edition of thirty signed and book was inspired by the dreams as a new mother in
was created in an numbered copies. The artist’s sleep-deprived the Summer of 2016.
Written, illustrated, and printed by Rhiannon Alpers. Letterpress printed with photopolymer plates and monotype, with an under layer of hand painted stars beneath, on Somerset Velvet Black. The endsheets are Fabriano Tiziano Anthracite and bound in Asahi Grey Crepe bookcloth. Foil stamped birds and title, this false accordion is masquerading in a Secret Belgian binding with Italian film yarn. Rhiannon Alpers, has an MFA in Book and Paper Arts from Columbia College Chicago and a BA in Book Arts from UC Santa Barbara, College of Creative Studies. She is a papermaker, letterpress printer and book artist. She has taught academic courses at San Francisco Art Institute, California College of the Arts (San Francisco) University of San Francisco, San Francisco State University, Dominican University (San Rafael) , Academy of Art University, Cabrillo College in Santa Cruz, Columbia College Chicago, Santa Reparata School of Art in Florence, Italy. She has taught workshops for Penland School of Crafts, Book Arts LA, San Diego Book Arts, Contemporary Jewish Museum, Kala Printmaking Institute, Center for Book and Paper in Chicago, and at her own studio in the Mission District. Previously Rhiannon worked as the Head of Studio Operations and was the Production Coordinator for the Imprint Publications for San Francisco Center for the Book. She was also the Studio Technician at Columbia College’s Center for Book and Paper program before moving to San Francisco. She has apprenticed/interned at Turkey Press in Santa Barbara, Larksparrow Press in Evanston, and worked as a production bookbinder for the Paper Source Bindery in Chicago.
She has exhibited nationally, and her edition and one of a kind artist books are produced under the Gazelle and Goat Press imprint. Gazelle and Goat is a letterpress and bookbinding studio located in the Mission district of San Francisco. In 2015 she received the Minnesota Center for the Book Arts Jurors’ Recognition of Merit for her edition, Remnants, which was exhibited at the CODEX International Book Fair and other galleries nationwide.
Tor Archer
Ascension, 2017 (above)
book cover, copper, steel, brass, gold leaf, silver leaf 9 x 13 in
Lone Tree Sutra, 2017 (right)
salvaged book pages, copper, steel 9.5 x 11.5 in
Tor Archer
San Francisco, CA
Tor Archer’s sculptural books offer a contemporary view of the archetypal objects of reverence, familiar to us from prehistoric archeological sites. His reverence for nature comes clear through the use of primary visual elements: pine tree needles, broken branches, leaves, eroded rocks. The structures emerge from rough materials, yet embody lightness and elegance by contrasting the meticulous finished forms with the mundane components used to create them. Ascension and Lone Tree Sutra are mixed media assemblage works on salvaged book covers from an abandoned homestead
in Willow Bunch Saskatchewan. The land in Saskatchewan near Willow Bunch was believed to have been first populated by Paleo Indians around 9,500 BCE Born in Massachusetts, Tor Archer grew up in Santa Barbara and has lived in San Francisco for many years. In 2016 artist completed a residency at Artist in residence: The Muong Cultural Museum, Hoa Binh, Hanoi and the Danang Sculpture Foundation in Vietnam. He is a three-time nominee for the prestigious SECA award, and has exhibited widely on the West Coast. He received his BA degree from UC Santa Cruz and his MFA degree from Boston University.
Doug Beube
Double Sided Shortcoming, 2017 altered book 12 x 12 x 7 in
Doug Beube
New York, New York
Doug Beube likes to look at the book as an inter-connecting block of wood. The codex, which, in Latin, literally means wooden block, is undeviating in its essential, expected and historical form. Beube exploits the inflexibility of the codex both theoretically and physically by ‘excavating’ the book as if the physical elements and text block becomes malleable and functions as an archaeological site or cadaver to be studied and sliced. By cutting, crushing, drawing, drilling, gouging and stitching, to mention a few actions he perpetrates upon books, he physically manipulates the outdated modality and pushes its physical properties until it almost falls apart. Peeling away the vulnerable layers of a book, its physical characteristics of paper, spine, board and thread become exposed. In referencing text, sometimes their words are readable and their content is recognizable, but in every case discarded books when transformed are repurposed into sculpture. Through the use of an assortment of power tools, the pages and text of an altered book are reconfigured into shapes that fluctuate between abstract configurations and narrative forms. Beube is a mixed-media artist working in bookwork, collage, installation, sculpture and photography. He has a BFA from York University in Toronto, ON and an MFA in photography from the Visual Studies Workshop in Rochester, NY. He regularly lectures on his work and exhibits both nationally and internationally. In 2011 a monograph entitled, Doug Beube: Breaking the Codex was published. David Revere McFadden, former chief curator of the Museum of Art and Design in New York City, wrote the introduction along with several well known art historians and critics who wrote in-depth essays about his thirty year art practice. In 2016 I received a Pollock Krasner Foundation Grant to pursue his work. Shortcomings is the original title of the graphic novel by cartoonist Adrian Tomine. It was published by Drawn and Quarterly in Montreal, Canada in 2007. The genre of this art form with seven to nine cells per page, in a gridded format, is drawn in black and white with ‘speech bubbles’ floating overhead of the characters in the book. In the ongoing series of collage and bookwooks, the removal and outlining of the drawings and speech bubbles using a surgeon’s knife is arduous. Reducing the content to line drawings, the pages become veiled layers, a dissected essence of the story that the brain comprehends as both linear and abstract. Between the two, narrative and abstraction, it invites the viewer to literally read between the lines and pages. The Red Infinity works are each a Mobius strip, an endless loop in which the viewer is perpetually engaged in reading its content. The original book is from, The Word: A Look At The Vocabulary of English, by Laird, Charlton, 1901-1984. Publication: New York: Simon and Schuster, 1981
Doug Beube
Red Infinity #7 & 9, 2018 altered book 6 x 3.75 x 2.75 in
Renée Bott
Berkeley, California
The History of the 20th Century in Landscape 2 is painted on collaged book pages from A History of the 20th Century by Martin Gilbert. Written history is one way to chronicle human endeavors. In his book, Gilbert describes one horrific human act after the next - acts of violence against mankind and our environment. “As I read,” said Bott “I whited out the text as if to erase those thoughts from my mind - yet his descriptions linger in my memory. It is our history that defines who we are today.” These text lined pages act as the armature for the artist’s paintings. With stories concealed beneath opaque lines, she superimpose s images of bucolic landscapes based on landscapes by Perelle’s 17th century antique engravings. She offers these images not as a way to forget our history, but as a way to honor the healing power of nature. In these paintings Bott explores the contrast between the stunning beauty and bounty of this world with the brutality and carelessness of human acts. She envisions a future that reveres the beauty of the natural world, and seeks to discover a humanity that is in harmony with it. In the painting: Durer's Deer, the image of the stag is rendered over the text of Victor Hugo's A Hunchback of Notre Dame.
complex and colorful intaglio prints within a traditionally black and white medium. Paulson Bott Press has published over 500 editions, working with many artists. In 2016, the archive of Paulson Bott Press was acquired by the deYoung Museum in San Francisco.
The engraving that this painting is based on, was taken from an etching done by Wenceslaus Hollar in 1649. His rendition of the stag is after Durer's own masterful etchings of the same image but is a mirror image. Born in Ann Arbor, Michigan and raised in Boston, Massachusetts, Renée Bott has always made and worked in art. She worked in fine art print publishing for over 30 years. For the past twenty years, she was a founding partner and Master Printer of Paulson Bott Press, a fine print atelier located in Berkeley, California. Here she worked with luminary artists such as Martin Puryear, Kerry James Marshall and Tauba Auerbach. Renée specialized in facilitating the creation of
Renée Bott The History of the 20th Century in Landscape 2, 2017 acrylic paint, ink, color pencil, on book pages and canvas 30 x 30 in (above)
Durer’s Deer, 2018
acrylic paint, ink, color pencil, on book pages and canvas 30 x 30 in (left page)
ValĂŠrie Buess
Prescious Capsule, 2017
wool and paperback, cut, folded and assembled 4.75 x 4.75 x 4.75 in
Valérie Buess
Marburg, Germany
For over 25 years, Valérie Buess, a Swiss artist living in Marburg, Germany (near Frankfurt), has exhibited around the world Her favorite materials are recycled paper from old magazines, books and phone directories. Shaped by rolling, collage, sewing and folding, they are transformed into imaginative sculpture, each typically created from a single object. Buess, whose ingeneous work transforms book pages into sculpture has been a regular in the Art of the Book exhibitions for the last four years. Her work has shown in much of Europe including Energheia, (Montrouge, France), just paper (Galerie Wichtendahl, Berlin), Faszination Papier (touring in Germany and France), Paper & Print (Cheongiu, Korea) and Leaf & Bound (Eureka, CA) to name a few. Precious Capsule in made from a book with cashmere wool inside. The capsule with its hard, impenetrable shell protects the vulnerable soft inner layer. Regulations is made from loose papers concerning law/juridical innovations / changes. (in German they are called:“juristische loose Blasttsammlung“). It is very thin stable paper. These are sheets which come monthly to lawyers, informing about changes in the law. They are bound together in a very thick book. “The sheets are spun/woven together,” says Beuss. “They hold / hide their meaning very tightly, shut in the words. Each sheet has a completely unique form – twirled, spiky and barbed.”
Valérie Buess
Regulations, 2010
bookpages, rolled and mounted 22.83 x 1.58 in
Sara Burgess Mill Valley, CA
Sara Burgess grew up in Wales, where the country lanes were lined with brilliant green nettles, fiddlehead ferns, and endless brambles populated with snails. When Burgess moved to Vancouver Island, that world was smooth rocks, more ferns, and trilliums. Moving again to Marin County, near San Francisco, Queen Anne’s lace, variegated echium, and golden California poppies surrounded the winding trails. The smallest details in each place made the memories that shape the images she cuts. Detail and materials hold great importance in both the objects and experiences she surrounds herself with and the work she produces. As an artist, Burgess finds that something intriguing and original happens when she cuts into paper to create forms and images, treating the negative space as an element of the overall language. To her, the simple relationship between positive and negative forms expresses her vision and thinking. Despite working with a single color and layer, a dimensional, colorful world emerges, only one where the viewer becomes the participant in each work’s completion. By leaving out elements, we are invited to fill in what we expect to see and feel, and our imagination becomes more active. Pressed explores the contrasting strength, fragility and elegance of nature. Much of the work for this series contains image of bees to embody how humanity depends on this animal that may be at the edge of extinction. "As a beekeeper," she says "the more I learn and spend time with these creatures, the more my affection and respect for them grows, as does an awareness of our symbiotic relationship. Several of my pieces express just how a world without the bees would leave the planet empty. I try to capture this through the paper : though remarkably resilient, the real art of the balance lies in what we decide not to cut away." Sara Burgess studied printmaking at the University of Victoria and received her MFA in Illustration from San Francisco’s Academy of Art College. She’s designed product lines (table linens, dinnerware and bedding) and has worked as an illustrator, animator and graphic designer in the UK, US and Canada.
Sara Burgess Pressed, 2017
16 handcut paper specimens of plants and flowers 6.5 x 4.125 in (each specimen)
Macy Chadwick Petaluma, CA
With quotes from A Thousand and One Nights, Meanwhile celebrates the importance of stories over time and across cultures. A series of organic imagery flows from page to page, overlapping and echoing the quality of A Thousand and One Nights as one story leads to another and another. The quoted text is set in shaped text blocks and clusters of letters, like flocks of birds floating amidst the shapes. A few larger lines of text per page guide the viewer through the book, describing Sheherazade's experience of telling stories and, as a result, saving herself from execution by the King. Macy received an MFA in Book Arts and Printmaking from The University of the Arts in Philadelphia and assisted book artist Julie Chen at Flying Fish Press for three years. Macy’s work is in prominent collections in the U.S. and abroad, including The Victoria and Albert Museum, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, and the Jack Ginsberg Collection in South Africa. Macy is currently establishing In Cahoots Press and Residency, a space for collaboration, artist’s books and printmaking, in Petaluma, California. Chadwick strives to reveal that which is unspoken: to make tangible the ephemeral,to make visual our human experience and interactions.To this end,she often engages metaphor in her work.For example,comparing breathing to the creative process in a limited edition artist book,employing infographics to relay an intimate dialogue in an installation, or creating a fictitious geographic terrain of emotional experience in a series of prints.
Macy Chadwick Meanwhile, 2017
letterpress artist book with clamshell box 10.5 x 10.5 in
Brian Dettmer
World Books, 2017
altered hardback encyclopedias 19 x 32 x 10 in
Brian Dettmer New York, New York
Like a surgeon saving the life of a patient on an operating table, Brian Dettmer uses knives and scalpels to carve exquisitely detailed sculptures that breathe new life into old books. When Dettmer gave a TED Youth Talk in 2014 titled “Old Books Reborn,” editors wrote: “Artist Brian Dettmer digs into a good book (literally, with a knife) to create beautifully intricate forms that reflect how we see old information in a modern world.” The 44-year-old New York-based artist is known for his alteration of preexisting media—old books, maps, record albums, cassette tapes—to create new, transformed works of visual fine art that, in his words, “expose their alternate histories and memories.” Considered one of the leading artists working with the book today, the Illiniois native has been exhibited at the Museum of Arts and Design in New York, the Renwick Gallery of the Smithsonian Institute in Washington, D.C., the Smithsonian American Art Museum, the Art Institute of Chicago, the Chicago Cultural Center and the Yale University Art Gallery, among others.
Brian Dettmer
World Books, 2017 (details)
altered hardback encyclopedias 19 x 32 x 10 in
Guy Diehl
Still Life with Caravaggio, 2010 acrylic on canvas 16 x 30 in
Guy Diehl Tiburon, CA
At the age of eight Guy Diehl stumbled upon the visual magic of linear perspective and with this new perception suddenly unlocked a whole new world for him. This all played a part in how he would shape his life and career as an artist and educator. In 1972 as an undergraduate student at California State University, East Bay (Hayward) he had the fortunate opportunity to study with first generation Pop Artist, Mel Ramos. In 1974, he began to work on his Masters degree in Fine Art at San Francisco State University. He studied with first generation Photo-Realist artists Robert Bechtle and Richard McLean. He graduated with his MA in 1976. Beginning in 1984 Guy began his still life series, smaller and more intimate paintings. This enabled him to move away from his strict Photorealism style of painting to a more flexible interpretation of what he was seeing. In 1992, Guy began to concentrate on the book as a primary subject matter, with references to art history, which would include artists of the early Modernist period from 1900 to the present. His aim is to first capture the viewer’s attention with the objects themselves, then encourage the viewer’s further reflection on the work and its narrative. Guy’s concept of art-about-art has become the focus of his work. It is not a new concept as artists have been remixing ideas from other artists throughout history. By referencing artists’ images with books and their titles, they are used to comment on or link to the objects within the painting. He applies this juxtaposition to place the familiar in a different context, combining diverse ideas to create unexpected compositions. Guy sees himself as an interpreter, who is making a record of his observations. These observations are intuitive, as well as responsive to images within the composition. The satisfaction with his work comes when he can make a painting as minimal as possible and still capture the fundamental nature of the subject matter. To know what to paint and what to exclude is the challenge. This distillation helps reveal the essence of a painting for him. As he continues with this exploration, he’s challenged to take his work further both in content and subject matter. Guy sees an ongoing refinement and depth in his work that grows and evolves as he moves closer to what is most important to him; to make a worthy painting that reflects human culture both past and present.
Casey Gardner
Infinite Archives, 2017
Folio containing letterpressed collection 8.5 x 12 (closed) edition of 39
Casey Gardner Berkeley, California
Infinite Archives consists of a portfolio and two interior folios, two maps and a ticket. The first folio is a Citation of Provenance, which holds the second folio, the Multiverse Baedekers, which opens to a map of La Ville Lumière, an alternate universe of Paris. Tucked in a back pocket is a map of multiverses and a ticket for travel to the universe of one’s choosing. What’s a Multiverse and what’s a Baedekers? First, the Multiverse: There is a theory that there may not be only one universe, but perhaps an infinite number. This concept is attractive to some cosmologists because it makes infinite compositional permutations possible, thus accounting for the miraculously fine-tuned forces of our universe. Countless universes provide enough probability that an optimal one, such as ours, would materialize. The forces that aligned to make the emergence of life possible in our universe are so exquisitely calibrated that physicists have found themselves wonderstruck, awed and slightly reverential. Such unaccountable propitiousness conjures notions of a sentient creator, which of course makes empiricists skittish, so they hypothesize the existence of innumerable universes, thereby explaining how the cosmos we happen to find ourselves in, is so perfectly suited for matter to coalesce, stars to form, galaxies to reel, earth to orbit and life to happen. Baedekers are travel guides published since in the 19th century. Gardner first heard of a Baedeker’s when Lucy Honeychurch used one for seeing the sights of Florence in E.M. Forster’s book, Room With a View. Later, she came across Mina Loy’s book of poetry entitled, The Lost Lunar Baedeker. Though she had never seen one of these guidebooks, in her imagination, they represented an era of decorous adventure and literary enchantment. Casey Gardner grew up in the Rocky Mountains. She received her first degree from University of Colorado, Boulder and worked as a journalist before receiving a BFA in Graphic Design and Printmaking at California College of the Arts. Her books are in Special Collections libraries around the world.
Jaz Graf
Inheritance, 2017
letterpress on porcelain with fabricated steel - 18 pieces 7.5 x 5 x 6 in (variable)
Jaz Graf
Jersey City, New Jersey Jaz Graf Artist Statement:
The french phrase, “nous sommes simplement de passage” translates into “we are only here for a moment’s time.” This bookwork of grief is a personal confrontation of a silent event, recognizing that the process of healing is communal. Every book is coded, a system of signs to be decoded by its reader. It is the ghost limb of an author, but more importantly, it becomes an extension of the reader’s body and experience. As a book splays open, the reader is in between a passage, a silent private voice expressed in a public space. I’m exploring the idea of a book, its anatomical components, variable forms, associations, functions, and adaptable framework for visuals and language. Books live between 2-d surface and 3-d object, serving multiple purposes: utilitarian, decorative, or as psychological entities. A book experience can evoke intimacy and vastness at the same time. One page or one word even, can open up new worlds. I’m interested in reimagining the bookwork to explore the temporal space of a page, and to transform the impermanent moment into enduring reverberation. Jaz Graf works with paper and print, incorporating printmaking techniques, digital imaging and experimental bookbinding methods. She manipulates plant fibers, textiles and wire, often combining elements and mixing media. Her approach involves a process of deconstruction and reconstruction of materials and impressions. Jaz exhibits locally and internationally, has been featured in AM New York News, The Jersey Journal and on NJ's Public Broadcast Channel - NJTV. She is former Vice President of Manhattan Graphics Center, a fine art print shop in New York City, and Board Member of ProArts Hudson County. Jaz is currently an MFA Candidate in Printmaking and Instructor of Record at the University of Notre Dame.
Andrew Hayes
Penland, North Carolina
We first discovered Andrew Hayes when he had a show at the Portland Museum of Contemporary Craft in 2012. He has since become one of the most collected artists in the gallery. His dedication to fine workmanship and artistic integrity are evident to all who see his work. Hayes grew up in Tucson, Arizona and studied sculpture at Northern Arizona University. The desert landscape inspired much of his early sculptural work and allowed him to cultivate his style in fabricated steel. After leaving school, Andrew worked in the industrial welding trade. While living in Portland, Oregon, bouncing between welding jobs and creating his own work he was invited to the EMMA collaboration. This one-week experience was liberating for Andrew and he was encouraged by his fellow collaborators to apply to the Core Fellowship at Penland School of Crafts. During his time as a Core Fellow, Andrew was able to explore a variety of materials and techniques. Surprisingly, the book became a big part of this exploration. In this work he faces the challenge of marrying the rigid qualities of metal with the delicacy of the book page.
Andrew Hayes
Pulp Discourse, 2018 steel and book pages 9 x 8 x 4 in
Since the Portland show, Hayes has been included in exhibitions and collections at Yale University, Hartford University, the Morris Museum in Morristown, New Jersey and the Mesa Contemporary Art Museum in Mesa, Arizona to name a few. He will have a one person exhibition at Seager Gray Gallery in December of 2018.
Andrew Hayes (left)
Andrew Hayes
steel and book paper 12 x 12 x 3 in
steel and book pages 10 x 7 x 4 in
Section, 2018
Pulp Discourse II, 2018
Susannah Hays Concetti, 2018
archival pigment prints on Museo Silver Rag 17 x 20 in
Susannah Hays Santa Fe, New Mexico
Susannah Hays approaches her photographic practice as a philosopher experiences poetic material renderings of our phenomenological world. Investigating tangible objects, each of her camera and cameraless images reveal a hidden beauty that asks us to remember where things come from—how they arrive and why they endure. Her series of medieval books, from the Tuscan region of Castiglion Fiorentino, sit on their shelves undisturbed. While DNA research unravels where and when they were made, visible traces of who touched, held and kissed them offer lasting impressions. A fine art photographer, book artist and educator, Susannah’s subjects are largely drawn from philosophy, biology and ecology. Her work first gained recognition in 2000 when she joined Scott Nichols Gallery in San Francisco and Photo-Eye Gallery in Santa Fe, New Mexico. While especially known for her early cameraless, 19th Century processed images today her phenomenological investigations expand to digital media. On the faculty of San Francisco Art Institute’s photography program from 2002-2012, Susannah is presently Contributing Faculty at University of Georgia’s Study Abroad Program in Cortona Italy. In 2012, she was awarded a two-year fellowship from the University of California Berkeley to complete her doctoral research. After appointments teaching at Shenkar College of Art and Design in Ramat Gan Israel and Leuphana Universität in Lüneburg Germany, she completed a 2-month artist fellowship at the Scuola di Grafica in Venice, Italy. Her dissertation Nature as Discourse: A Co-evolutionary Systems Approach to Art and Environmental Design (2016) is currently being revised for publication. She lives and works in Santa Fe, New Mexico.
Susannah Hays
Sacra Theologie, 2018
archival pigment prints on Museo Silver Rag 17 x 20 in
Charles Hobson (Pacific Editions) Flight, 2017
handmade artist book 11 x 7 x 2 in (box) edition of 30
Charles Hobson (Pacific Editions) San Francisco, California
Flight is a limited edition artist book of 30 copies, completed in the fall of 2017. Charles Hobson wrote the text and created pastel monotypes and drawings for the front and back of each book which have been reproduced as high-resolution digital prints. The five tales in Flight are each a testament to the strength of the urge to fly in the years before 1903 when the Wright Brothers made sustained flight a reality. Each tale starts with a narrative of the attempt at flight followed by an image of the sky to which a paper airplane has been attached. The airplane can be removed by the reader and unfolded to reveal a fictional message written to capture a personal incident in the life of the aspiring aviator. The stories include Daedalus (7th Century BC, Greece), Leonardo Da Vinci (15th Century, Italy), Sir George Cayley (Early 19th Century, England), Jean-Marie Le Bris (15th Century, Italy) and Otto Lilienthal (Late 19th Century, Germany). Each of the paper airplanes has a design on the back. For example, Daedalus made his plane from a map of Crete. Leonardo used one of his drawings of his flying machine‌ Flight is housed in a fabric covered drop-leaf box. The book is covered with book cloth which has been printed with a cloud image that wraps around the front and the back. A small paper airplane made of the same cloud image has been attached to the cover. Aside for the title on the drop-leaf box there is no other text on the box or cover. On the reverse of the accordion are monotypes of the birds that the aviators watched and by which they were inspired. Charles Hobson’s books are characterized by elegant choices in materials and delicately wrought imagery as well as a profound respect for his subject matter. He has operated Pacific Editions, a publisher of limited edition artist books since 1986. He has taught about artists's books at the San Francisco Art Institute since 1990. In 2007, Stanford University acquired the design archive of his work and mounted coordinated exhibitions at the Green Library and the Cantor Art Museum.
Rodger Jacobsen San Rafael, California
Rodger Jacobsen’s series of sculptures with big heads began in 1969 with his sculpture, “Whoops” depicting the figure perched precariously on a pole and about to fall. The big-headed guy has been repeated in subsequent sculptures sleeping, eating and reading. A lover of comics since he was a child, Jacobsen’s big headed guy is an avatar, a good-natured everyman taking us through the pratfalls and simple pleasures of every day life. Born and raised in Mill Valley, artist Rodger Jacobsen attended the College of Marin and completed his Bachelor and Masters degrees in sculpture at the San Francisco Art Institute. He was the chairman of the sculpture department at the Art Institute from 1966 to 1973, teaching sculpture and drawing. His work can be found in the collections of the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the Oakland Museum of California, the University of New Mexico Art Gallery, the San Jose Museum of Art and the Lanyon Institute of Chicago. A larger version of The Reader was acquired by Oklahoma State University and sits in the University library. It is reported that the nose of the sculpture has been worn to a bright polish as students rub it for good luck before going in to exams.
Rodger Jacobsen
The Reader, 2017
cast bronze 9.5 x 8 x 5 in
Rodger Jacobsen The Reader, 2010
cast bronze on marble base 36 x 20 x 27 in from the collection of the Oklahoma State University Library
Lisa Kokin
Cryptic, 2015
thread, upholstery batting 15.5 x 17.5 in
Lisa Kokin
Shpilkes, 2016 (right page)
broken sewing machine needles, thread, industrial felt, wood 36 x 23 x 3 in
Lisa Kokin
El Sobrante, California These works come from Lisa Kokin’s “asemic” series. The word “asemic” means “having no specific semantic content.” The Asemic series is the logical outgrowth of Kokin’s previous series, Facsimile, in which zipper fragments served as stand-ins for text. She expanded her “writing” to now include a variety of objects and materials on substrates as varied as linen, canvas and industrial felt. In this series Kokin invents “words” and “languages” with materials that she naturally gravitates to: small domestic metal items, rusty metal fragments found on the street, safety pins, broken needles from the Facsimile project, and thread which she uses in unruly bunches to accentuate its gestural quality. In making this work she realizes how much she likes using objects in ways they weren’t intended to be used, purely for the love of shape, line, juxtaposition and resonance. Lisa Kokin makes art with recycled materials that she finds at flea markets, thrift stores, and recycling centers. She has worked with buttons, photographs and books, most recently with simple thread and zippers and shredded money. Kokin’s work is often a critique of the socio-political status quo imbued with a healthy dose of levity and a keen sensitivity to materials and processes. Sewing and fiber-related sensibilities play a key role in much of Kokin’s work, which she attributes to growing up in a family of upholsterers. Thread, which in the past she used to construct and embellish her work has, in her most recent body of work, become the primary material. Kokin explores irony and memory in her seemingly ephemeral pieces, allowing transiency itself to be immortalized in lasting works Lisa Kokin received her BFA and MFA from the California College of of art. the Arts in Oakland, CA. and is the recipient of numerous awards and It is difficult to classify Lisa Kokin’s work. She is a conceptual grants including the Dorothy Saxe Creativity award at the Contemporary artist to be sure, but few conceptual artists break as many Jewish Museum and the Purchase Award from the Richmond Civic boundaries in working with their materials. Her work has Center Public Art Interior Acquisitions Project in Richmond, CA. content, humor and social commentary while maintaining a rigorous adherence to painstaking process.
Linda Mueller
Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer, 2017 - 2018 canvas, wood, book pages, acrylic and oil 24 x 30 in
Linda Mueller Novato, California
Painted in acrylic and oil on canvas, wood, and pages from books about the modernist painter Gustav Klimt, this piece by Linda Mueller is based on a portrait of a wealthy Viennese woman, Adele Bloch-Bauer, commissioned by her husband in the early 1900’s. The dispute over the Nazi-looted works was the subject of the 2015 film Woman in Gold, starring Helen Mirren as Bloch-Bauer’s niece, Maria Altmann, and Ryan Reynolds as her lawyer. Gustav Klimt ( July 14, 1862 – February 6, 1918) was an Austrian symbolist painter and one of the most prominent members of the Vienna Secession movement. Klimt is noted for his paintings, murals, sketches, and other objets d'art. Klimt's primary subject was the female body and his works are marked by a frank eroticism. In addition to his figurative works, which include allegories and portraits, he painted landscapes. Among the artists of the Vienna Secession, Klimt was the most influenced by Japanese art and its methods. The veiled book pages form a geometric low relief, echoing the original painting’s reference to Byzantine gold mosaics, which Klimt ardently admired for their “unbelievable splendor.” The altered book, as well as Klimt’s painting suggest the richness and other-worldliness of a religious icon surrounded by ancient symbols of fertility, female sexuality, and the spiral of life. After a career in advertising, Linda Mueller began taking classes at the San Francisco Art Institute. She started doing Altered Books for the annual fundraising shows at Marin Museum of Contemporary Art in Novato, California, garnering awards for her works with artist biographies such as Velázquez, Holbein and Durer. Using book pages to form clothing, background and jewelry, care is taken to be sure the work of the artist shines through the work.
Emily Payne Glint, 2018
book covers, book boards, gold leaf 24 x 48 in
Emily Payne Berkeley, California
Glint is a composition made entirely of leftover book board pieces. It is a mix of raw and refined. It hangs like a textile with a suggested weave and weft. Payne says of the work, “I always wanted to work with long thin lines of book boards that sit side by side and create a texture that is so familiar but that eludes definition. The texture comes from the books and their various cloth covers but seen side by side, they take on a form completely separate from the book. There is something about working with leftovers and bringing them back to a more heightened role, where they get to play leading parts again. I have added gold leaf on top of some of the book boards which also gives it a feeling of something old that still has grace and composure. I like to create a combination of raw elegance.” Emily Payne was born in San Francisco and grew up in Mill Valley, California and Amherst, Massachusetts. She went to Oberlin College where she studied English and Women’s Studies. Emily moved to San Francisco after college and studied figure drawing and oil painting. Her love of making sculptural things with paper led her to pursue an MFA in printmaking and book arts at San Francisco State University. In the midst of busy, often noisy classrooms, she anchored her concentration with heavy, low tech but utterly reliable tools like the letterpress, the book press and a beat up wooden ceramics table she found abandoned in the corner of the sculpture lab. It became her makeshift studio space. At the heart of Emily Payne's work is drawing. By reducing things to their simplest elements, she finds that they have maximum interaction with the space around them. Shadows and the play of air around an object or work on paper is as important to the work as the work itself. Emily Payne will have a solo exhibition at Seager Gray Gallery in September of 2018.
Brian Singer
Martin Luther King, Jr. 2017 ink, cut books 26.5 x 57 in
Brian Singer
John Fitzgerald Kennedy, 2017 ink, cut books 22 x 16 in
Assassinated April 4th, 1968 Remington Game Master 760 (.30-06) Killed by James Earl Ray
Assassinated November 22nd, 1963 6.5Ă—52mm Carcano Model 91/38 infantry rifle Killed by Lee Harvey Oswald
Brian Singer
San Francisco, California
Artist Brian Singer's series Assassinations explores gun violence and fetishism in America. For each leader, the gun (or guns) used in their assassination are printed onto pages of books written by, or about the victims. The book is then cut up, the pages are turned on their sides, and reordered to form the image of the gun using the edges of the pages. The result is intended to elicit mixed emotions, juxtaposing visually pleasing imagery with a violent event. Each work is a poignant reminder of how so many heroes were lost at the hands of someone wielding a gun. The work sees history through the lens of the firearms themselves and each is catalogued with the date of the assassination, the particular gun used and the name of the shooter. Martin Luther King, Jr., for example, was murdered on April 4, 1968 at the Lorraine Hotel in Memphis. The gun was a Remington Game Master 760 (.30-06) and the assailant was James Earl Ray, a 40-year-old convicted armed robber who had escaped from the Missouri State Penitentiary in Jefferson City, Mo., on April 23, 1967. Less than a year later, he was able to purchase a gun in Birmingham, Alabama and bring it to Memphis for the shooting. The largest of the works is the one on John Fitzgerald Kennedy, 22 x 16 inches framed. Kennedy was shot on November 22nd 1963 by Lee Harvey Oswald as he rode in a motorcade through Dealey Plaza in downtown Dallas Texas. The weapon was a 6.5x52mm Carcano Model 91/38 infantry rifle. In March of that year, Oswald (under the assumed name Alek Hidell) ordered the rifle with an attached telescopic sight from an advertisement in American Rifleman Magazine. The rifle was ordered from Klein’s Sporting Goods in Chicago with Oswald paying $19.95 plus postage and handling, by money order. This amount included money for the rifle ($12.78), plus a new 4x telescopic sight ($7.17) that was to be custom mounted to it as part of the package. The image is stark and long with the telescopic sight mounted. On February 21st, 1965, in New York City, Malcolm X, the African American nationalist and religious leader, was assassinated by rival Black Muslims while addressing his Organization of Afro-American Unity at the Audubon Ballroom in Washington Heights. This work by Singer uses the pages of books on Malcolm X turned on their sides to depict the three guns used in his slaying – a Colt 45 M1911 pistol, a Remington Spartan sawed off shotgun and a Luger P08. Malcolm X, unlike King, who believed in non-violence felt that black people should defend themselves “by any means possible,” but he became more moderate after a pilgrimage to Mecca,
Brian Singer
Malcolm X, 2017 (above) ink, cut books 26.5 x 57 in
Assassinated February 21st, 1965 Colt 45 M1911 pistol Remington Spartan sawed-off shotgun Luger P08
Killed by Thomas Hagan (Talmadge Hayer), Thomas Johnson (Khalil Islam) and Norman Butler (Muhammad Abd Al-Aziz)
Brian Singer
Abraham Lincoln, 2017 (right) ink, cut books 28 x 19.5 in
Assassinated April 14th, 1865 44-gauge, single shot, Philadelphia Derringer pistol Killed by John Wilkes Booth
believing that racism was the culprit and combatting bigotry became his battle cry. The three shooters were Thomas Hagan (Talmadge Hayer (muslim name), Thomas Johnson (Khalil Islam) and Norman Butler (Muhammad Abd Al-Aziz.)
Brian Singer
Mahatma Gandhi, 2017 (below) ink, cut books 17 x 16 in
Assassinated: January 30th, 1948 .380 ACP Beretta 1934 pistol Killed by Nathuram Godse
In Abraham Lincoln, by Singer, the small 44-gauge, single shot, Philadelphia Derringer pistol looks small and indeed was. For a gun that had such a monumental impact on American history, the weapon fired by John Wilkes Booth is surprisingly diminutive. Fashioned from brass, the derringer pistol weighs barely 8 ounces. The gun, which discharged a single .44-caliber lead ball, was easily concealed by Booth but accurate only at close range. Booth, an actor sympathetic to the Confederate cause, learned that Lincoln was to attend Laura Keene’s acclaimed performance of Our American Cousin at Ford’s Theatre in Washington on April 14th, 1865. Booth masterminded a plan to simultaneously assassinate Lincoln, Vice President Andrew Johnson and Secretary of State William H. Seward–the president and two of his possible successors–seeking to throw the government into disarray. After shooting the president in the back of the head, Booth leapt to the stage shouting “Sic semper tyrannis”, the Virginia state motto. Mahatma Gandhi was assassinated on 30 January 1948 in the compound of Birla House, a large mansion in central New Delhi. His assassin was Nathuram Vinayak Godse, a right-wing advocate of Hindu nationalism. Gandhi had just walked up the low steps to the raised lawn behind Birla House where he conducted his multifaith prayer meetings every evening. Godse stepped out from the crowd flanking the path leading to the dais and into Gandhi's path, firing. The gun was a 1934 .380 ACP Beretta M semi-automatic pistol. Through its serial number it was traced to an officer during invasion of Abyssinia by Italy. Later it was taken by a British officer as a war trophy. Though how it reached India is still unknown, it was given to Godse by a coconspirator. The three bands out of alignment in the work represent the three shots fired at point-blank range. The work, John Lennon, is presented as a nine-block montage reminiscent of Andy Warhol, echoing its location in New York and the times. Lennon was murdered on December 8, 1980 by Mark David Chapman. John Lennon and Yoko Ono were returning to their apartment at the Dakota when Chapman, who had earlier that day gotten Lennon’s autograph, called out his name again.
Brian Singer
John Lennon, 2017 (left) ink, cut books 35 x 33 in
Assassinated December 8th, 1980 .38 Special Charter Arms snubnosed revolver Killed by Mark David Chapman
Brian Singer
Harvey Milk, 2017 (below) ink, cut books 15 x 12 in
Assassinated November 27, 1978 .38-caliber Smith & Wesson Model 36 Chief 's Special Killed by Dan White
“Mr. Lennon.� Lennon turned and was shot twice in the back and twice in the shoulder with a Charter Arms .38-caliber pistol. Chapman bought the gun legally six weeks before the shooting from J&S Sales, LTD, a shop in Honolulu, Hawaii, where Chapman had been living. He reportedly paid $169. Chapman had a permit and no police record and the dealer wouldn't have had any reason to block the sale. Authorities at Honolulu's airport said Chapman probably got the gun past airport security simply by placing it in his luggage. At the time, baggage checked with an airline was not searched or X-rayed. Chapman flew first to Atlanta, then on to New York City. Still, the gun was illegal. New York does not recognize the validity of handgun permits issued in other states. Out-of-towners who bring handguns into the city frequently face criminal charges, even if they have a license elsewhere. Finally, we have Harvey Milk. It was a shocking day for San Francisco when Dan White killed San Francisco Mayor George Moscone and Supervisor Harvey Milk at City Hall On November 27, 1978. White shot both at close range with a .38-caliber Smith & Wesson Model 36 Chief 's Special. White was disappointed that Moscone had refused to reappoint him to his seat on the Board of Supervisors, from which White had just resigned, and that Milk had lobbied heavily against his reappointment. Brian Singer, also known as someguy is a San Francisco based fine artist whose projects have received international attention. His art ranges from intimate works with paper to large scale participatory projects. The 1000 Journals Project, launched in 2000, was turned into a book, a feature length documentary, and has been exhibited at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and the Skirball Cultural Center in Los Angeles. The project was covered in The New York Times, San Francisco Chronicle, Wall Street Journal, Entertainment Weekly, Better Homes and Gardens and many others. More recently, he launched the provocative project TWIT Spotting, where photos of people using their phones while driving were placed onto Billboards in the San Francisco Bay Area. His series, Assassinations, are created from books whose content is subverted by turning the pages on their side and arranging them in new aesthetic arrangements, while conceptually still referring to their content, the history and writings of the subjects of the series, all ultimately killed with guns.
Dolph Smith
Tennarkippi Highku Journal, 2013 sculptural handmade book 14 x 5 x 3 in
Dolph Smith Ripley, Tennessee
In 2017, veteran artist Dolph Smith was honored by the Memphis Brooks Museum of Art for his lifelong work in artist books. Smith, who taught drawing and painting for 30 years at Memphis College of Art, constructs books from scratch. Constructing books is "moving away from that craft cloud that hangs over things like that," Dolph says. "It's moving away from it being a craft to really being an art form. And I support that. It's an object. It's interactive. You're drawn to use it rather than just stare at it. And it has moving parts. You pick up a book with 30 pages. I see that as 30 moving parts." Tennarkippi Highku Journal is accompanied with a book containing original haiku by the artist and there is a ladder, hence the spelling “Highku.” “I have long used the ladder as an important expressive mantra,” says Smith: “The ladder lifts one up, hence, inspirational. And, to add a touch of humor, one never gets upset when it lets you down. The book opens and then pages extend as an extension ladder might.” In Jilly Barnes’ Dream, the artist has printed his short story The Fire Pole. In the story the main character installs a fire pole in his house, having long dreamed of being a fireman. In 2014, Smith was honored by Penland School as the Outstanding Artist Educator of the Year. His work is included in The Penland Book of Handmade Books.
Dolph Smith
Jilly Barnes' Dream, 2017 - 2018 sculptural handmade book 13 x 8 x 6 in
Tamar Stone
New York, New York
The work of Tamar Stone focuses on the lives of women. Inspired by her own experiences, they capture moments in women’s lives when issues of appearance, self-esteem and assimilation become paramount due to physical restrictions placed on the body, either by fashion or by medical necessity. In But Didn’t Sleep Much, Stone tells the stories of women from the 19th – 20th century who are traveling on their own in troubled times. These include Louisa May Alcott, serving as a civil war nurse, Vera Brittain, British writer whose work as a nurse in World War I led her to become an activist for pacifism, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, prominent American feminist, sociologist, novelist, writer of short stories, poetry, and nonfiction, a lecturer for social reform, Anne Ellis, pioneer woman and writer who spent difficult years in sanitariums trying to cure her asthma, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, feminist, sociologist, novelist, writer of short stories, poetry, and nonfiction, and a lecturer for social reform. Mary Harris Jones (Mother Jones) female labor organizer, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, suffragette and abolitionist and Ann Eliza Young, one of Brigham Young's fifty-five wives and later an outspoken critic of polygamy. In order to read these stories, one must become intimately involved with the bed, pulling back the covers to "turn the pages", unmaking the bed. The only way to close the story is to re-make the bed, mimicking the actions of housework that women have been doing for centuries.
Tamar Stone
But Didn't Sleep Much, 2013-2017
handmade book object in the form of a bed 15 x 10.5 x 22 in
Tamar Stone
The Effect of the Whole, 2012-2015
handmade book object in the form of a corset 18.5 x 14 x 2.5 in
Tamar Stone
New York, New York
This project was inspired by and designed around original documents that supported the corset and orthopedic appliance industry from the late 19th century through the early 20th century. Female body proportions are used in the advertising for figure-defining undergarments, on a small piece of historical female ephemera, an advertising measuring tape for The Chicago Corset Co. Ball’s Health Preserving Corset. Printed on the tiny tape measure are bold statements that declare, “The Only Corset a Growing Girl Should Wear,” as well as “The Most Comfortable of all, and The Only Corset Not Injurious to the Wearer.” In addition, written declarations by wearers of the corset confirm how well the corset works, and it is indeed, “Health-Preserving” as its title states. Stone’s interest in body image and women's shapes comes from her history of spinal curvature (Scoliosis). During 1970's, from the ages of 13-18, she wore a brace 23 hours a dayand then 1984 she again found herself in a corset/brace but this time for a herniated disk. Throughout these years, she developed a sensitivity to "correction" and the need to fit in. The P.W. Hanicke Manufacturing Co. sales pamphlet contained an array of images with descriptive text for orthopedic corsets used to correct various degrees of spinal curvature, as well as other disfiguring body ailments. The combination of these materials, as well as text from historical medical books concerning the measuring and twisting of the spine (in some instances due to the wearing of corsets), as well as corset advertising, and deportment manuals, create the narrative for this piece.
Barbara Wildenboer Cape Town, South Africa
Folly suggests an alternate reality, an apocalyptic future - that of the PostAnthropocene. (The Anthropocene being the proposed epoch dating from the commencement of significant human impact on the Earth's geology and ecosystems). Living in Cape Town, South Africa where drought due to global warming and overpopulation has depleted the city’s water supply, it is not surprising that Wildenboer’s new series should examine the effect of human activities on nature. The three-dimensional collages are musings on modern human life and the fragility of the symbiotic relationship between man and the ecology a nebulous relationship that is jeopardized by consumerism, wastefulness and a sense of disconnection with the natural world. Through the act of altering books and other paper based objects the intention is to draw emphasis to our understanding of history as mediated through text or language and our understanding of the abstract terms of science through metaphor. Barbara Wildenboer has participated in group exhibitions and art fairs both nationally and internationally, including South Africa, San Francisco, Washington, London, Dubai, Sydney and Hong Kong. In 2011 she was nominated and subsequently selected as one of the top 20 finalists for the Sovereign African Arts Award for which she received the Public Choice Prize. She has been awarded several international residencies such as the UnescoAschberg residency ( Jordan, 2006), the Al Mahatta residency (Palestine, 2009) and the Red De Residencias Artisticas Local (Bogota, Colombia, 2011), the Rimbun Dahan artist residency (Penang, Malaysia, 2013), L’Atelier Sur Seine (Fontainebleau, France 2016). Wildenboer lives and works in Cape Town, South Africa. She obtained a Masters in Fine Art (cum laude) from the Michaelis School of Art at the University of Cape Town in 2007.
Barbara Wildenboer
Folly: Blindsided I, 2017 (left) Folly: Blindsided II, 2017 (upper right) Folly: Blindsided III, 2017 (lower right) Collage and bookpage sculpture 37.5 x 27, 36 x 34, 38 x 29 (framed) in
Audrey Wilson Kent, Ohio
Shooting Range is about the Columbine school shooting in 1999. The bullets represent those who died that day – 13 innocent people and the two shooters. A 1999 year book is used and shows where major events took place (such as the bombs and shooting in the lunch room as well as the library). Neon is used because this particular school shooting triggered many more to occur. Therefore, is it used as an advertisement for schools to become new shooting ranges. School shootings did occur before Columbine, but this particular one was an omen for what was to come. Originally from Columbus, Ohio, Audrey has a BA in Crafts with a concentration in glass, as well as an Art Education degree, from Kent State University. Audrey has worked at the Chrysler Museum Glass Studio in the assistantship program; helping with classes, daily operations and working with the museum's visiting glass artists. Previously she worked and lived in the Washington DC area, while she was the Studio Coordinator at the Washington Glass School. While there she assisted with public art projects, taught and assisted in production work. Currently, she is working on her MFA in Glass at Kent State University. Her work can be seen exhibited throughout the U.S. and internationally.
Audrey Wilson
Shooting Range, 2018 neon, found objects 18 x 24 x 4 in