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Context art Miami Booth E5 Seager Gray Gallery 2013
23 Sunnyside Ave. Mill Valley, CA 94941 415.384.8288 seagergray.com
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Context Art Miami CONTEXT Art Miami Pavilion | Midtown Miami - Wynwood 3201 NE 1st Avenue | Miami, FL 33137
Fair Dates: December 3 - December 8, 2013
Photography Credits: Jody Alexander - photos by R. R. Jones Andrew Hayes - photos by Steve Mann Lisa Kokin - photos by Lia Roozendaal/Jagwire Design, Kumi Korf - photos by Noni Korf Gyรถngy Laky - photos by Ben Blackwell All other photos provided by the artists themselves Direct inquiries to: Seager Gray Gallery 23 Sunnyside Ave. Mill Valley, CA 94941 415.384.8288 art@seagergray.com
All Rights Reserved
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Context Art Miami Seager Gray Gallery is pleased to be exhibiting at CONTEXT Art Miami this year. Seager Gray, based in Mill Valley in the San Francisco bay area, features an impressive stable of artists in all media, ranging from outstanding emerging and mid career talent to those more established and internationally known. The gallery has a focus on works that combine content with a mastery of materials. This year’s booth was specifically curated to engage visitors in the interaction of form and meaning. From Lisa Kokin’s La Vie en Rose, a feminist view of popular cowboy myth to Gyöngy Laky’s Why, an architecturally complex socio-political interrogation, the works explore that harmonic chord that resonates when form and content are in perfect agreement. Works by these artists, as well as Lia Cook, Tim Tate, Teresa Cuniff and Andrew Hayes will be exhibited along side the sophisticated oil paintings of Leslie Allen, Chris Gwaltney and Inez Storer. Donna Seager has distinguished herself nationally for her commitment to the book as a medium for art. The gallery mounts a yearly exhibition that includes fine press, altered and sculptural forms of artists’ books. Offerings at Context include works by Jody Alexander, Squeak Carnwath, Julie Chen, Marie Dern, Jessica Drenk, Daniel Essig, Mary Risala Laird, Emily Payne and Terry Turrentine, among others.
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Jody Alexander Jody Alexander is an artist, bookbinder, papermaker, librarian and teacher who lives and works in Santa Cruz, California. She makes paper, in the Eastern-style, and uses her papers to bind books with exposed sewing on the spine in a number of historical and modern binding styles. She combines these books with found objects, wooden boxes and drawers, metal, bones, etc. to create sculptural works. Her pieces celebrate collecting and storytelling. She also likes to rescue books in distress and give them new life as rebound books, scrolls and sculptural pieces Jody Alexander has taught book arts at San Francisco Center for the Book,The Center for the Book in New York City and University of California, Santa Cruz. Her work appears in a number of publications including Masters: Book Arts: Major Works by Leading Artists, 500 Handmade Books, and the recently published 1000 Artists’ Books: Exploring the Book as Art.
Jody Alexander, Exposed Spine #20, #23 and #24 (above) book spine, tea-stained batting, thread 5 x 10 x 3.5”, 2012
Jody Alexander, Upholsterable: Sushi Roll - Cloth (left) rebound books spine, tea-stained batting, steel wool, thread 7 x 7.5 x 4”, 2012
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Jody Alexander, The Odd Volumes of Ruby B. #191 wooden puzzle box, fabric, thread, book page, found photo, fabric, thread 6.5 x 12 x 1.5�, 2011
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Leslie Allen There is something in the work of Leslie Allen that distinctly marks her as a San Francisco Bay Area painter. Perhaps the light and beauty of the natural surroundings there inspire her. Perhaps it is the lyrical quality of the paintings – the generous divisions of space and the exuberant way colorful pigment glides across the surface either in creating clear diagonal intersections or rising loops of color. These paintings take their inspiration from the California Central Valley and the light coming in from the Pacific - from fog, rain and mountain. These are paintings from the place where Richard Diebenkorn, Frank Lobdell and others invented their own brand of abstraction. “I like to look at a landscape or a scene and squint my eyes tightly shut,” says Allen. “I try to capture behind my closed eyes the basic shapes and marks that help me begin the work.” Moving to the Bay Area in 1980, Allen took classes from Chester Arnold at the College of Marin and continued her studies at the Academy of Art. It was Arnold who encouraged her to switch to oil painting. She studied privately with the gifted painter and went on painting trips to France under his tutelage. Her years as a watercolorist had given her a steady hand and a watchful eye. She began experimenting, working hour upon hour with the oils, learning how to move paint across the surface gesturally at times, descriptively at others. Long before Malcolm Gladwell spoke of the 10,000 Hour Rule, Leslie Allen knew that mastery takes repetition and a devoted attention to what is happening on the canvas. She was determined to master her materials. Her lifelong strong work ethic has served her well. She learned to “listen to the paint,” ever aware that each mark on the canvas serves to inform the next.
Leslie Allen, The Chance (left) oil on canvas over panel 36 x 35”, 2013
Leslie Allen, Indian Summer Nights (right) oil on canvas over panel 60 x 48”, 2013
Leslie Allen, Fullblown September (pg. 10) oil on canvas over panel 60 x 48”, 2013
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Rhiannon Alpers Rhiannon Alpers is a papermaker, letterpress printer and book artist. She 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 has taught workshops and college courses at San Francisco Center for the Book, Sonoma Community Center, Kala Printmaking Institute, Academy of Art University of San Francisco, Stanford University, Filoli Gardens Estate, Cabrillo College in Santa Cruz, Feather River Art Camp, Center for Book and Paper in Chicago, Columbia College Chicago, and Santa Reparata School of Art in Florence, Italy. Specimen Series These one of a kind artist books straddle the line between book and box, and were inspired by the scientific logs and collections of the 1600s in Europe. The materials were all found and collected by the artist to create a visual narrative in the form of a miniature cabinet of curiosities. Specimen Series: Hamadryas Amphinome (upper left and center) hand crafted wooden padauk frame, butterfly specimen (Hamadryas Amphinome), handmade paper 4.5 x 6 x 2.5�,2013 Specimen Series: Cyrestis Strigata (lower left and right) found 1920s Italian/English translation dictionary, handmade paper (overbeaten abaca), silk bookcloth, seed pods, rose hips, found account log scraps and decorated papers. 3 x 4 x 1.5�, 2013
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Robert Berner Robert Berner studied Industrial Design at Pratt Institute in New York and continued his art studies at UC San Diego and UC Berkeley. He has worked with many calligraphy masters including Arne Wolf, Alan Blackman, Thomas Ingmire, Sherry Bringham, Karl Georg Hofer, and Susie Taylor. His works are complex and precise, bringing together diverse references and a deep knowledge of traditions in printing and calligraphy.
No Matter How You Fold It Ki spiritual systems. Four 3-sided pyramids are housed in a larger clear plexiglass shield. The smaller pyramids express facets of specific The center one has to do with the nature of God as Gandhi defines it. The letters G, O, D are the key letters rendered in formal Trajan Roman Capitals. Each letter is displayed only on one side of the pyramid. T A O, D E I, and W A Y are the other three names each having a pictorial treatment and a calligraphic style. Those three letters are placed on one face of the outer pyramids so they are read as a full word only when one is looking at the whole display. The T A O has gouache paintings combined with a cursive italic in Copperplate calligraphic style. The D E I incorporates the illuminated manuscript with Lombardic Versals. And W A Y is done in a sign painters’ Swash brush-lettering with a pseudo-sanskrit writing. (Size: 18 1/4” width x 18 1/4” depth x 8” height)
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Christian Burchard Born in Hamburg, Germany in 1955, Christian Burchard has been living in the United States since 1978. Starting out as a furniture makers apprenticeship in Germany in the middle seventies, he studied sculpture and drawing at the Museum School in Boston then at the Emily Carr College of Art and Design in Vancouver BC. In 1982 he opened Cold Mountain Studio in Southern Oregon. His early focus was on furniture and interiors, but gradually shifted to woodturning and sculpture, moving between vessel oriented forms and sculptural turning. His work has been included in most of the major turning related exhibits of the last twenty something years and is exhibited widely throughout the US. His pieces are part of many public and private collections. His current work includes wall sculptures and freestanding sculptural objects. He is also sought after as a teacher and demonstrator at craft schools and conferences and related turning events. He currently resides with his wife at the outskirts of Ashland, Oregon.
Christian Burchard, Literary Dynasty #3 sculpture, bleached madrone burl 13x 18 x 15�, 2013
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Carolee Campbell Ninja press was inaugurated in 1984 by Carolee Campbell who is its sole proprietor. While there was no specific literary agenda governing the selection of works to be published by the press at the outset, the abiding interest has been, in the main, contemporary poetry. The decision to embark on the path of bookmaking came from her extensive experience as a photographer working in the darkroom with both nineteenth and twentieth-century photographic processes. Turning photographic sequences into bound books ushered the way into bookbinding, followed by experimental book structures. Eventually, she expanded her work into letterpress printing, thereby opening the way into contemporary poetry – confronting it for the first time with a directness and penetration she had seldom experienced as a reader. One of the primary goals set at the inception of the press was to strive toward the highest standards of excellence in craftsmanship and quality while attempting to find new approaches to the union between word, image, and book structure. That aspiration will continue to fuel the inspiration for future edition works as well as one-of-a-kind books. Campbell’s work is, in a word, sublime, both in her choices of literature and in her execution and absolute attention to every detail.
The Persephones Poems by Nathanial Tarn, 2009 This set of splendidly rich & multifaceted poems is the second Ninja Press publication by this highly esteemed poet whom Eliot Weinberger has described as “– belonging to a secret lineage in modern poetry: the ecstatic erudites.” The text pages consist of 12 unbound folios opening to 14 x 18 inches. Each folio is painted by hand on both front & back using sumi ink & salt by Carolee Campbell, making every book unique. The poems are printed on and alongside the artwork.The type is hand set Van Dijck with Weiss Initials Series I for the display & printed letterpress on dampened Domestic Etching. The folios are held in a goat parchment cover. The book is protected by a hard-sided chemise wrapper covered in deep green Asahi Japanese silken cloth which, in turn, slips into a case covered in a natural-colored linen. The Persephones was first published by Christopher’s Books in Santa Barbara, California in 1974. Much of the edition was subsequently destroyed by fire. The poems were significantly altered in 2007 by the poet for this Ninja Press edition.
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Carolee Campbell, The Persephones handmade limited edition book 14 x 18�, 2009 15
Squeak Carnwath Philosophy, 2010 Artist’s book: double-sided prints, portfolio, leather satchel portfolio - 12 x 10.5 x 1; prints - 11 x 10 x 0.125 Edition of 20 Inspired by a suggestion from her colleague Jo Whaley, Squeak Carnwath’s Philosophy collects some of the artist’s most piquant and personal work in a format which takes the reader behind the scenes of her celebrated paintings. Philosophy is an artist’s book which doubles as a “facsimile archive,” as Carnwath puts it, of the studio artifacts which accumulate as she works on her trademark oil and alkyd canvases. Carnwath refers to these artifacts – the loose sheets bearing notes, drawings, color tests, quotations, and various other bits of information – as “the crazy papers.” Working with Donald Farnsworth in late 2009 and early 2010, the artist scanned dozens of the crazy papers, as well as passages from small paintings and from her “studio books” – lined ledgers into which she tapes clippings – combining and rearranging elements from all three sources to compose the 40 images in Philosophy.
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Julie Chen Julie Chen is a Book Artist who lives in Berkeley, CA. After completing a degree in printmaking at the University of California, Berkeley, Chen became intrigued by the language, equipment, and materials of Book Arts and entered the Book Arts program at Mills College. Book Arts encompass binding, letterpress, printing and printmaking, combined with three-dimensional art. The finished products are unique three-dimensional pieces of art that include text. Chen’s books are considered exceptional for their craft and quality, while playfully teasing the conceptual limits of books. Always mindful of the reader who will interact with her structures, she selects paper to delight the eye and appeal to the touch, while creating forms that function as “vessels” for text, images, ideas and meaning. Despite the nontraditional forms it often occupies, the text in Chen’s creations is letterpress printed. In addition to teaching Book Arts at Mills College and operating Flying Fish Press, Chen regularly lectures on bookmaking and teaches workshops nationwide. Julie Chen, Cat’s Cradle artist’s book: letterpress, silkscreen, 11.25 x 8.25” edition of 50, 2013
Cat’s Cradle translates thoughts about the nature of existence from idea to form by employing the book structure itself as a visual/ physical model of concepts portrayed in the text. The book as object can be displayed in two distinct ways: circularly or linearly. This dual display feature contributes it’s own conceptual meaning to the book as a whole
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Lia Cook Lia Cook combines digital technology and traditional influences in her work using the jacquard loom and other innovative processes. Her cutting edge work blurs the distinctions between the traditionally disparate media of computer technology, weaving, painting, and photography. Using intensely personal self-portraiture as a visual base, Cook’s work lingers on the edge of intimate and monumental. Cook is the recipient of numerous prestigious awards, including several NIA grants, the California Arts Council Fellowship, and the Flintridge Foundation Fellowship. Her work is in the permanent collections of major international museums including the Museum of Modern Art, NYC; the American Museum of Art and Design, NYC; the Metropolitan Museum, NYC; and the French National Collection of Art, Paris.
Lia Cook, Doll Face Pillow (left) woven cotton, rayon 67 x 51”, 2010
Lia Cook, Binary Traces, Young Girl (right) Jaquard woven cotton 68 x 48”, 2004
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Teresa Cunniff Teresa Cunniff is an artist, educator, and graphic designer. She earned her MFA in Spatial Art from San Jose State University in 2005. Currently, she teaches 2D Concepts and Color Theory in the Foundations program. Her artwork explores our human regard for other species and the psychic bond we have to animals we may never come in contact with. A range of media and processes including sound, digital animation, sculpture, and installation creates a context in which the power structure between humans and other species is deconstructed and reconfigured. If our relationship to the living world is not based on a hierarchy of owner and possession, or superior and inferior, a far more complex interaction becomes available, one in which alienation is diminished and the unique vitality and intelligence of all expressions of life can be recognized for their inherent value. Herd (right) Resin, hydrated alumina, 2011 ”Herd” was inspired by a chance encounter on a trail with a white tailed deer, its huge ears moving continuously and independently from each other as it observed my presence. Tinged with animism, the sculpture supplants the notion that we humans are the only observers and recorders. The ears are at various positions of attention, suggesting glimpses of alert and listening animals, transforming the gallery wall into a metonymic representation of a forest. Ground Luminosity (below) Animation, sound, 2009 “Ground Luminosity” elliptically refers to the relationship between humans and insects, particularly that of lifecycle and biomass. Their numbers are so much greater than ours, their lifespan so very brief. Their forms, what they are made of, their lack of individuation: all are foreign to us. The sound component immerses the viewer in an insect world of sorts. Subtle overlapping sounds of clicking, chomping, and fluttering fill the air and reference insect biomass and behavior. A digital animation of a moth, luminously white, relentlessly fluttering in place, offers a mesmerizing visual to focus attention. Standing in front of this isolated figure, one might consider it as an individual, perhaps have an awareness of attributing human emotion to it, and also consider how easily it’s life is dismissed. The animation for this work was created in Maya using a still image of a moth. The sound is taken from a single chirp of a cricket, slowed down and overlaid multiple times.
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Jessica Drenk Jessica Drenk was raised in Montana, where she developed an appreciation for the natural world that remains an important inspiration to her artwork today. Tactile and textural, her sculptures highlight the chaos and beauty that can be found in simple materials. Drenk’s work is also influenced by systems of information and the impulse to develop an encyclopedic understanding of the world. In 2009, Drenk received an Artist Project Grant from the Arizona Commission on the Arts, funding the installation of Archaeologica at the Mesa Arts Center in Mesa, Arizona. In 2006, Drenk was awarded the International Sculpture Center’s Outstanding Student Achievement in Contemporary Sculpture Award. Her work has been pictured in Sculpture, Interior Design, and Curve magazines and seen in shows at the International Grounds for Sculpture in New Jersey, the Albuquerque Museum, the Tucson Museum of Art, the International Book Fair of Contemporary Creative Books in Marseilles, France, as well as galleries and art fairs across the United States. Drenk has an MFA from the University of Arizona, graduated Cum Laude from Pomona College, and is a member of the Phi Beta Kappa academic honor society.
Jessica Drenk, Carving 2 book, wax, wood 9 x 7 x 4”, 2012 21
Daniel Essig Daniel Essig is a studio artist and instructor living in Asheville, North Carolina. Daniel has taught book arts workshops at Penland, Anderson Ranch, Iowa City Center for Books, Columbia College, and Oregon College of Art and Craft, among others. He has received the North Carolina Visual Arts Fellowship Grant. Dan exhibits his work nationally and his work is in numerous private and public collections; recently his work has been purchased by the Renwick Museum of the Smithsonian and the Charlotte M. Smith Collection of Miniature Books at the University of Iowa Libraries. Many of Daniel’s sculptural pieces are featured in The Penland Book of Handmade Books. Daniel Essig, Luna reclaimed book pages, moth wing, mica 23 x 12 x 6”, 2012
Carved and painted wood, 19th rag text papers, handmade flax paper, mica, shellac, nails, velvet, 1671 illustrations, silk, ammonite fossils, luna moth wings. Ethiopian and Coptic Bindings. It was through the influence of Dolph Smith that Daniel Essig began to reach beyond the simple Ethiopian book. He was making sculptural books by hanging paper from wooden structures, and Essig tracked him down and ultimately studied with him. Under his influence he developed his bridge books, which use the same Coptic binding but exaggerate each of the elements: the covers become elongated into two-foot-long towers that stand on a tabletop, and rather than 10 or 12 signatures in the text block, he uses 100 to 200, well over 1000 pages.
Casey Gardner, Threshold (right) handmade, letterpress artist book, edition of 65 5.75 x 11.5”, 2012 22
Casey Gardner Casey Gardner has the combination of extraordinary creative thinking and exacting skills in bookmaking that make her an amazing force in the book arts world. After graduating from CU Boulder with a degree in journalism, she worked in newspaper and magazine publishing before enrolling in art school. She has a BFA in printmaking and graphic design from California College of the Arts. At CCA, she studied book art with Betsy Davids. Her books are a perfect example of the harmonic chord that is struck when form and content are in perfect agreement. Her skills at letterpress printing allow her to “draw” with text line and lead the viewer into an orchestrated experience of word, structure and imagery.
Threshold is a book about approaching and moving through transformation. The piece explores several aspects of change and revolves around a story inspired by Ovid’s tale of Daphne and Apollo in The Metamorphosis. Daphne is a nymph with a passion for hunting; she is pursued by Apollo, the god of sunlight, music, poetry, and healing. His Delphic edict is gnothi seautón, know yourself. Despite all his interesting traits, Daphne prefers her freedom. He chases her through the forest and rather than be caught, she pleas for a transformation and is turned into a laurel tree. (The laurel becomes Apollo’s sacred symbol.) 23
Chris Gwaltney Chris Gwaltney was born in Van Nuys, California. Gwaltney’s influences hail strongly from the San Francisco figurative group. For Gwaltney, the importance of the figure is not in the pure representation but the expression of the gesture. Often a gesture can say more than words by depicting the beauty of resilience from, for example, teenage awkwardness to the inner strength of a woman. The gesture acts as a window into the human condition. His figures attempt to capture the fullness of the human experience. All his source materials emanate from his family as he believes these relationships are the most honest expression in his life. Gwaltney’s process is one of construction and then deconstruction, thus leading to multilayered meanings. For him, each painting poses an argument and he finds the process that leads to the end just as pivotal as the completed work.
Chris Gwaltney, Three Generations oil on canvas 60 x 42�, 2012
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Andrew Hayes Andrew 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 technique. 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, Lode steel, book pages 16 x 7 x 2�, 2013
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Andrew Hayes, Omer (far left) steel, book pages 19 x 12 x 2”, 2013
Andrew Hayes, Offset (upper left) steel, book pages, brass 13 x 9 x 5”, 2013
Andrew Hayes, Clivus (below) steel, book pages 9 x 22 x 5”, 2013
Andrew Hayes, Waver (lower left) steel, book pages, brass 16 x 9 x 9”, 2013
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Lisa Kokin 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 self-help books, the contents of which she shreds, blends, pulps, glues, and otherwise modifies before presenting them to her viewers in various states of recognition. 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 of art. Lisa Kokin received her BFA and MFA from the California College of the Arts in Oakland, CA. The recipient of numerous awards and grants, Kokin was most recently given the Dorothy Saxe Award from the Contemporary Jewish Museum in San Francisco and the Purchase Award from the Richmond Civic Center Public Art Interior Acquisitions Project in Richmond, CA. Kokin’s work has been featured in many books and articles including Art Made From Books, Chronicle Press, by Laura Heyenga. She is currently featured in a one person exhibition at the Boise Art Museum through April 27, 2014, entitled How the West Was Sewn.
Lisa Kokin, Rustle cowboy book covers, thread, wire, mull 55.5 x 35 x 13.5”, 2013
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For the Boise Art Museum exhibition, Lisa Kokin began to experiment with ideas about western culture and the American cowboy. Using antique lace and thread, Kokin replicated the exagerrated stances of the cowboys on the covers of early western novels. Says Kokin, Rendered frilly and ephemeral, they are mere shadows of their former intimidating selves. There is a catalog available of Kokin’s cowboy series along with other available works. The catalog is accompanied by an essay by Paul Liberatore, excerpted here, There is no more iconic symbol of America than the gunslinging cowboy. In Hollywood movies and western novels, the flinty-eyed cowpoke has been endlessly glamorized for winning the West at the point of a pistol, shooting first and asking questions later. In her solo show at the Boise Art Museum, How the West Was Sewn (through April 27, 2014), artist Lisa Kokin takes aim, through the beauty of her art, at the myth of the cowboy and its use by opponents of reasonable gun control laws, who argue that gun ownership is part of our American heritage. In her “Lace Cowboy” series, Kokin repurposes vintage lace and found fabrics to create cowboys and their guns that are, in her words, “frilly and ephemeral, mere shadows of their former
intimidating selves. The guns are in the hands of ineffectual cowboys.”
Lisa Kokin, Cowboy #7, La Vie en Rose vintage textiles, thread 46 x 41”, 2013
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Lisa Kokin, Cowboy #8, Joe vintage textiles, thread 51.5 x 27�, 2013
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Lisa Kokin, Podner #1, detail below cowboy book pages, beeswax, wire, batting, thread 73.5 x 36 x 12.5”, 2013
Lisa Kokin, Podner #2 cowboy book pages, beeswax, wire, batting, thread 58 x 30 x 12.5”, 2013
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Kumi Korf Ithaca, New York
Kumi Korf was born in Tokyo, Japan, and studied architecture at Tokyo University of Fine Arts. Her MFA degree (1977) is from Cornell University, in print-making. Her earliest artists’ books were exhibited at the Center for Book Arts and the Metropolitan Museum in 1986. She had an apprenticeship at Dieu Donné Papermill in 1987, and developed her own technique creating works using kozo fiber with inclusions of printed paper, cloth, threads, and pigmented linen pulp.She received a fellowship at Bob Blackburn’s Printmaking Workshop in 1990. She has used intaglio printmaking to create her own visual world. Her recent artists’ bookworks include intaglio prints, letterpress, and structural inventions for bookbinding. Korf has taught workshops on artists’ books at The Center for the Book Arts in New York, San Francisco Center for the Book, Women’s Studio Workshop, Rosendale, NY, Center for Contemporary Printmaking, Norwalk, CT, as well as at many colleges and universities. Her works are included in many public and private collections, nationally, and internationally, including the Library of Congress, New York Public Library, Victoria and Albert Museum, Tate Library, and Getty Center Research Library.
The Alphabet of My Phobias intaglio and silkscreen on Japanese Akatosashi paper 10 x 12 x 1” closed, 2012
Intaglio prints on Japanese paper are cut to square format and folded to form pages. They are folded in such a way that in order to read the text verses of a song by Maia Vidal - one has to unfold, open and close again to continue reading. The words are heavy in content and exposing the hidden words replicates fear, the subject of the text. What is coming next? The text is printed by silkscreen over intaglio prints. Colors and patterns of intaglio are intentionally random. The genius of this book is that it is constructed in a way that leads the viewer to an unexpected experience.
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Gyöngy Laky Gyöngy Laky‘s sculptural forms are exhibited in museums and galleries throughout the United States. Internationally, her work has been exhibited in France, Sweden, Italy, Denmark, Holland, Switzerland, Hungary, Lithuania, Colombia, the Philippines and China (with one-person exhibitions in Spain, Denmark and England). She is also known for her outdoor site-specific installations which have occurred in the US, Canada, England, France, Austria and Bulgaria.A past recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship, Laky was also one of the first textile artists to be commissioned by the Federal Art-in-Architecture Program. Her work is in many permanent collections including the San Francisco MOMA, The Smithsonian’s Renwick Museum of American Art, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the Oakland Museum, the Contemporary Museum in Honolulu and others (see “Collections”). Laky was born in Budapest, Hungary, in 1944 and emigrated to the United States as a small child. She graduated from Carmel High School and completed undergraduate and graduate studies at the University of California, Berkeley (1967-1971). Postgraduate work followed with the UC Professional Studies Program in India. Upon her return, she founded the internationally recognized Fiberworks, Center for the Textile Arts, in Berkeley, with accredited undergraduate and graduate programs. She is a professor emerita of the University of California, Davis (Chair, Department of Art, 1995-1997).
Gyöngy Laky, Why commercial wood, plastic soldiers, screws, paint 48 x 26 x 7”, 2011
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Mary Risala Laird Mary Louise Laird, a native of Milwaukee, founded Quelquefois Press in 1969 at Mt. Horeb, Wisconsin, where she also worked with her former husband, Walter Hamady, at the Perishable Press. In 1988 she moved to Berkeley, California, where she continues to print under the Quelquefois imprint. Her deep interest in mysticism and Sufism is evident in much of her later work.
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Mary Risala Laird, Remember the Light 11.4 x 8.66 x 3.15 in, 2007
This grand opus by Mary Laird was two years in the making and is a triumph of craftsmanship and inspiration. From the Colophon: Resurrected and transmogrified etchings form the basis for this Infinitesimal edition, primarily printed letterpress. Actual copies: Seven, using Dante and Goudy Engraved. Text papers include Arches BFK, & Somerset. Endpapers &concertina guards: Nefertiti, Long ago made by hand at Barcham Green Mill, and hoarded by me Awaiting the right project! Overprinted relief-roll etchings When Murshid Sings and Earthquake, may include laser-print, egg tempera, assorted colored pencils, polymer plates, Xerox, cut-outs, sewing &reticulated energy patterns. The lacedcords wooden board binding you are holding, is based on an 8th c. model. Hand-planed covers, laboriously covered with deer or goatskin, are fitted with brass ornaments These copies have been hand numbered. Addendum: Maple and cherry covers are not covered. Bas-relief of right and left hand, carved into front and back covers. Books come enclosed in drop spine boxes. Trays are black calf or goatskin lined with white deer or golden elk skin. Outer covers: there are two of purple ostrich and two of teal ostrich; two more of lime green bovine; and one in lime green goatskin. Leather straps match the outer covers, and attach to brass hand filed knobs on the fore-edge. A copper disc is inlaid on the front cover, a debossed crescent moon at its base.
Remember the Light/ by Mary Laird 2007. seven in edition. ( dvd included) 35
Howard Munson Howard Munson is a book artist and printmaker with an interest in experimental forms. His books are characterized by the exquisite craftmanship of his bindings and prints. The “naked” prints and drawings, enclosed within these crafted casings make the book arts the best medium for Munson’s talents, allowing you to expeience the textures of the prints and drawings and touch the papers with your hand. Munson is well known for his popups and teaches at the San Francisco Center for the Book. He received his MFA from the San Francisco Art Institute and established the Academy of Art College’s book arts classes, teaching there for 13 years. His prints and books have been shown at SFMOMA, the Chicago Art Institute, Mexico City’s Galeria Metropolitana and the Pratt Graphics Center in New York.
Howard Munson, Sound Marks handmade book with etchings 9.5 x 12.5, 2006 36
Pamela Paulsrud Pamela Paulsrud, visual artist, papermaker and calligrapher received her MFA from Columbia College in Interdisciplinary Arts concentrating in Book and Paper. Pamela investigates the interface of the concept, process and calligraphic nature of handwriting with the linear features of the landscape using artist books and handmade paper. Paulsrud chose the book in sculptural form to explore narratives of the landscape. The book has been the vehicle of language across the ages and she considers it an intrinsically visual experience, a spatial and tactile object whose form is fundamental to conveying its message. Through the physicality and visual suggestions she hopes to not only produce a book and image simultaneously, but also to convey a language in the absence of text that speaks of the complex interaction of nature and humanity.
Pamela Paulsrud, Touchstones altered books size variee, 2013 37
Emily Payne Emily Payne grew up in Mill Valley, California and Amherst, Massachusetts. She received her B.A. from Oberlin College in Ohio and her M.F.A. in Printmaking and Book Arts from San Francisco State University in 1999. She lives and works in Berkeley, California. This new series, entitled Topograpy, makes a further exploration of book as object. Every page has been glued and dried until the book forms a block which can be sanded to reveal it’s former history. The works have an uncanny presence, as if they might exist in geological time.
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Emily Payne, Topography Series #2 (below, upper) altered book, pva glue 7 x 9.5 x 1”, 2013
Emily Payne, Topography Series #5 (below, lower) altered book, pva glue 4.5 x 6.5 x .75”, 2013
Emily Payne, Topography Series #1 (left) altered book, pva glue 7.5 x 10 x 1.5”, 2013 Emily Payne, Topography Series #4 (above upper) altered book, pva glue 4 x 5.5 x 1.5”, 2013 Emily Payne, Topography Series #3 (above lower) altered book, pva glue 5 x 7 x 1.25”, 2013 39
Sara Press In her work as a book artist, Sara Press explores challenging ideas. She tends especially towards subjects of overlap between humans and nature. Sara got her BA at Columbia and then attended the San Francisco Art Institute for her masters in photography and printmaking. Under her imprint, Deeply Game Productions, she has created exquisite imaginative books that often highlight the poetry and beauty of animal behaviour. There is a trademark intelligence to Press’ work mixed with a fertile imagination and beautiful craftsmanship. Sara Press, The Wolf Girl of Midnapore handmade letterpress book 5.7 x 7.8, 2011
Based on the true story of Kamala, a feral child captured in India in 1920, this book features 6 original intaglio/aquatint etching prints set against gorgeous Indian papers. The letterpress text is an original short story narrating Kamala’s experience, as well as an historical chronology of her life. The book’s rich colors and rough edges combine with a classical scholarly presentation to evoke Kamala’s varied experiences: raised in the animal realm of vivid senses and immediate needs, then forced into the world of a Christian orphanage, where she eventually evolves language, bipedalism, and her own fierce aesthetic appreciation – for the color red. The story reads from the point of view of the feral child whose animal instincts are primal and immediate. The gorgeous red papers, illustrating Kamala’s love of the color red can be removed and stored in the front of the book, mirroring the child’s hoarding of all things red. 40
Lisa Rappoport Lisa Rappoport began printing in 1997 under the imprint Trouser Press, and changed the name to Littoral Press a couple of years later. Being a book artist and letterpress printer feels like the ideal blend of words and image, craft and physical labor for this dedicated artist. The work of the press concentrates on poetry but includes many genres. Lisa teaches letterpress printing and bookbinding at the San Francisco Center for the Book. The War Works Hard is a poem by Iraqi-American poet Dunya Mikhail presented as an 11-page accordion fold artist’s book. The English text, translated by Elizabeth Winslow, is on one side; the Arabic text has its own cover, opening from right to left, and occupies the other side of the pages. So the book has two front covers, giving the two languages equal weight. Both sides contain drawings made for the book by John Paisley. Design, letterpress printing and binding by Lisa Rappoport at Littoral Press. Ten per cent of the sales price goes to Doctors Without Borders for humanitarian relief work. Lisa Rappoport, The War Works Hard handmade letterpress book 4 x 4�, 2013
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Cathy Rose Cathy Rose employs a variety of materials to create her sculptures, with porcelain, wood, and metals being predominate. The 1700 squarefoot studio is articulately organized to accommodate each step of a sculpture’s creation, as well as to store in plain sight the hundreds, if not thousands, of found objects and pieces and parts the artist has collected over nearly twenty years. Growing up in central Florida, Rose had no other ambition than to share her passion for art with others. With a Bachelors degree in fine art and a Masters degree in art education, she taught art to elementary school students, as well as college students for fourteen years. She found herself lured to the medium of ceramics in 1992. And in 1993 she discovered the specific ceramic medium that interested her most. It was the type of clay called porcelain. “It has a temperament,” Rose says of porcelain. “It fights me and shrinks in the kiln, but it’s so smooth it’s like working with cream cheese.” In 1996, after three years of creating porcelain mixed-media sculptures, Rose began to exhibit her work outside of Florida. Her first two shows proved to be notably successful and in the 17 years since, she has collectors throughout the world. Cathy Rose, Somersault handformed porcelain, found objects, copper wire 23 x 13 x 8”, 2013 Cathy Rose, Letting Go (upper right) handformed porcelain, found objects, copper wire 32 x 16 x 10”, 2013 Cathy Rose, Crosswind (lower left) handformed porcelain, found objects, copper wire 23 x 13 x 8”, 2013 Cathy Rose, Adapt (lower center) handformed porcelain, found objects, copper wire 28 x 12 x 10”, 2013 Cathy Rose, Heart’s Content, (lower right) handformed porcelain, found objects, copper wire 76 x 24 x 12”, 2013 42
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Inez Storer The paintings of Inez Storer take the viewer on a magical journey through history, sensation, and internal experience. They are mulitlayered and full of artifacts of the artist’s life and interests. The paintings are richly textured and woven, both in their physical properties and in their associations across layers of time. They have elements of both dark and light, depicting colorful, expansive lives and things that go bump in the night. Inez Storer was born in 1933 in Santa Monica, California. She studied at the Art Center in Los Angeles, the San Francisco Art Institute, the University of California at Berkeley, and the San Francisco College for Women, ultimately receiving her B.A. from Dominican University in San Rafael, California (1970). She received her M.A. from San Francisco State University (1971).
Inez Storer, Havana oil, mixed media on panel 48 x 36”, 2013
Inez Storer, Captain Marvel and Harlow oil, mixed media on panel 36 x 48”, 2013
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Storer’s work has been exhibited in solo exhibitions consistently thorough the United States at institutions such as the Reno Museum of Art, the San Jose Museum of Art, the Monterey Museum of Art, the Fresno Art Museum, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, the Missoula Museum of Art, Montana, and The National Museum of Jewish History, Philadelphia. Her work has been included in numerous group exhibitions throughout the country. Storer has taught at the San Francisco Art Institute (1981 - 1999), Sonoma State University (1976 - 1988), San Francisco State University (1970 - 1973), and the College of Marin (1968 - 1979). She has received numerous grants and awards, including a Pollock-Krasner Foundation grant in 1999, and has worked twice as a visiting artist at the American Academy in Rome (1997, 1996). Her work is included in the permanent collections of the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, the Oakland Museum of California, the Lannan Museum in Fort Worth, Texas, the San Jose Museum of Art, and the de Saisset Museum at Santa Clara University.
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Tim Tate Tim Tate is co-founder of the Washington Glass School located in Mt. Rainier MD. He has shown nationally and beyond since the 1990’s, including the Museum of Arts and Design in New York, SOFA New York and Chicago, Art Basel Scope in Switzerland, the Art Miami at Art Basel-Miami, the Luce Foundation Center for American Art at the Smithsonian, the Renwick Gallery and commercial galleries from Washington, DC to London and Berlin. His awards include “Rising Star of the 21st Century” from the Museum of American Glass, the Virginia Groot Foundation Award for Sculpture, three Artists Fellowship awards from the DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities and the Mayor’s Art Award. He also was awarded a Fulbright Scholarship to teach in Sunderland, England in 2012. His work is in the permanent collections of the Smithsonian American Art Museum, Renwick Gallery, the Mint Museum, the Fuller Museum, the Katzen Art Center of American University, the Milwaukee Art Museum and Vanderbilt University. He has just finished a solo video show at the Taubman Museum in Roanoke, Va. and had a large scale video installation at the Katzen Center at American University in 2013. Tim Tate, Vonnegut Study (upper) cast glass, video 11 x 9.5 x 2”, 2013 Tim Tate, She Was Often Gripped with the Desire to be Elsewhere (lower) cast glass, video 12 x 10.5 x 2”, 2013
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Tate’s newest series deals with dimensional reality. Ornate baroque and rococo picture frames made in cast lead crystal surround video images that create a dialog with the glass framing. Images such as the one on the upper left, which deals with Tim’s love of Kurt Vonnegut. He it typing the same letter that Billy Pilgrim types out in the beginning of “Slaughterhouse 5” - “I have become “unstuck” in time and am living on the planet Tralfamador.” In another piece a young girl, dressed in pleated skirt and saddle shoes, holding a suitcase covered in labels is walking confidently into her unknown future. That work is entitled, “She Was Often Gripped with the Desire to be Elsewhere” It is ahout out to the 1978 photo by Marcia Resnick from the collection of LACMA. Other works at the fair include two pieces dedicated to Eadweard Muybridge, Muybridge Study: Woman and Muybridge Study: Man (right). These images are taken directly from Muybridge stills. In the spirit of Muybridge, Tate took films of an acrobatic friend doing cartwheels and headstands in Movement Study I and II (not pictured) Lastly, there are two round-framed works, Longing for One Hundred Years and The Good Doctor. The first shows the first time in history that two men are filmed dancing together. It is an image from 1898 in Edison’s studio. Just as we perceive these 2 men has morphed over the last century, so too has the way we view new media. The second features the eminent Dr. Paul Parkman and his wife Elmerina, their heads spinning, one becoming the other.
Tim Tate, Muybridge Study: Woman and Muybridge Study: Man (upper) cast glass, video 9 x 7.5 x 2”, 2013 Tim Tate, Longing For One Hundred Years (left) cast resin, video 9” circle, 2013 Tim Tate, The Good Doctor (left) cast resin, video 9” circle, 2013 47
Terry Turrentine Photographer and artist, Terry Turrentine has spent 25 years taking photos of birds. She has traveled to the egret rookeries in different states, often getting no usable shots on any day or season. Turrentine, an award-winning photographer hopes that her work will encourage preservation of wildlife species around the world.
Terry Turrentine, Snowy Owl Sixteen color photographs a poem by Mary Oliver and an essay by Richard Lang in a beautifully designed clamshell box. Size: 14″ x 19″ Edition: 30 Photographic Prints: archival pigment prints on Hahnemühle German Etching Paper printed at Electric Works, San Francisco, USA Book Design: John DeMerritt, John DeMerritt Book Design Text Printing: printed letterpress by James Lang, Horwinski Printing, Oakland, CA 48
Terry Turrentine, Great Egret Fifteen duotone photographs and a letterpress booklet with artist biography and an essay by Richard Lang in a beautifully designed clamshell box. Size: 12″ x 15″ Edition: Printed in an edition of 30 Photographic Prints: archival pigment prints on Somerset paper, imaged by Conor Collins at Electric Works, San Francisco Book Design: Marie C. Dern, Jungle Garden Press, Fairfax, CA Text Printing: printed letterpress by Richard Seibert, Berkeley, CA 49
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