A Visit to Mad Geppettto's Workshop: Barbara Alexandra Szerlip at the SF Center for the Book

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A Visit to Mad Geppetto’s Workshop

A VISIT TO

MAD GEPPETTO’S WORKSHOP: THE WORK OF BARBARA ALEXANDRA SZERLIP NOVEMBER 15, 2013 THROUGH FEBRUARY 1, 2014

Exhibition Committee Mary Austin, Kathleen Burch, Sas Colby, Jennie Hinchcliff, Alyson Kuhn, and Samantha Hamady. Honorary member: Marie Dern

A Visit to Mad Geppetto’s Workshop: The Work of Barbara Alexandra Szerlip in exhibition at the San Francisco Center for the Book November 15, 2013 – February 1, 2014 Curator: Donna Seager Exhibition Coordination: Mary Austin Exhibition Design: Donna Seager Catalog Design: Kathleen Burch Cover Concept + Design: Kathleen Burch Copy Editor: Samantha Hamady Creative Direction: Kathleen Burch, Mary Austin, Donna Seager Photography: Don Felton Catalog Printing: Inkworks, Berkeley, California ISBN: 978-1-929646-05-0 First printing, November 2013 2013 the individual artists and the San Francisco Center for the Book 375 Rhode Island Street San Francisco, California 94103 sfcb.org A portion of the purchase price of this exhibition catalog helps fund the operation of the San Francisco Center for the Book, a 501(c)3 nonprofit organization.

Cover Carnivore 2013 Frontispiece Otto Octavius, Criminal Mastermind 2013

Exhibition Volunteer: Sarah Wolken Special thanks to : Cathy DeForest, Martin Muller, Donna Seager, J. Curtiss and T.J. Taylor

This exhibition made possible by the generous support of: Kahle /Austin Foundation San Francisco Grants for the Arts San Francisco Foundation Seager Gray Gallery Board of Directors Mary Austin, Co-founder Kathleen Burch, Co-founder Coleen Curry Alan Dye Wally Jansen Mary Laird Margaret Miller Kathleen Rydar Donna Seager Anne Smith Curtiss Taylor, Emeritus Duff Axsom, Emeritus SFCB Staff Chad Johnson Malgosia Kostecka Jeff Thomas Arthur Weiss Esther Yi

This catalog uses Tangent typefaces, designed by Terminal Design. The San Francisco Center for the Book logo was created by Studio Hinrichs.

The San Francisco Center for the Book, founded in 1996, fosters the joys of books and bookmaking, the history, artistry, and continuing presence of books in our culture and enduring importance as a medium of self-expression.

The SFCB was co-founded by Mary Austin and Kathleen Burch, who recognized a growing need in San Francisco and the Bay Area for a facility specifically designed and equipped for the book arts. The first Center of its kind on the West Coast, the SFCB now offers over 300 workshops and many free events a year, including the annual street fair called Roadworks: Steamroller Printing Festival. In addition to workshops and events, there is a thriving artist-in-residence program, producing numerous artists’ books every year, and collaborations with many local nonprofits, museums, and libraries. The SFCB also hosts special visits and hands-on demonstrations for students of all ages, teachers, librarians, corporate team building, collectors, visiting printers, artists, writers and designers.

Table of Contents

A Note from the Curator DONNA SEAGER

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A Note from the Artist BARBARA ALEXANDRA SZERLIP

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A Visit to Mad Geppetto’s Workshop Atlas #3

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Brush

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Carnivore

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Gender Will Always Be An Issue

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Glow-in-the-Dark Bibelot

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The Story Emerges From Its Pages

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Improbable Machine

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Knowledge / Power

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The Limits of Limitation

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La Marquise

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The Mystery of Animal Migration

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Otto Octavius, Criminal Mastermind

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Out of Africa

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Reliquary

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A Note from the Curator

Donna Seager

As a gallerist, it has always been my intention to present book-related arts in a contemporary gallery atmosphere. We are coming up on our ninth annual “Art of the Book” exhibition in May of 2014. It is my belief that the book as a medium for art offers an æsthetic experience unlike any other and I encourage collectors to expand their collections to include these works, whether it be fine press handmade editions or sculptural and altered versions. Great art inspires multiple associations.

The associations book lovers have with books extend to not only the text and content, but also to fine materials, the weight of them and how they relate to countless hours of personal enjoyment. It is my hope that this exhibition will lure art lovers into the center to experience the rich world contained within.

Exhibition curator Donna Seager owns a respected contemporary gallery in Mill Valley – the Seager Gray Gallery – that also specializes in artists’ books. She mounts an annual exhibition at her gallery entitled THE ART OF THE BOOK, bringing together fine press, artists’ books and contemporary sculptors using books as subject and material in their work. Her mission is to expose the arts community to the rich array of talented printers, binders, printmakers and book artists associated with the San Francisco Center for the Book and encourage notable fine art collectors and museum curators to consider book-related works as an important genre in its own right.

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A Visit to Mad Geppetto’s Workshop: The Work of Barbara Alexandra Szerlip

The works of Barbara Alexandra Szerlip are many things – visual metaphors, carefully crafted poems, cabinets of curiosity. Ranging in subject from literature to the ironies of human history, they are often thought-provoking and always engaging.

Atlas #3 (2008) features a globe surrounded by bound atlas pages, set atop a rotating base. A line from T.S. Eliot’s Four Quartets, in gold calligraphic letters, opens up the question: What does it mean to “think” that you are voyaging, and how can you determine which way is “forward”?

In Gender Will Always Be An Issue (2004), a small set of blinds juxtaposes the images of two 16th century royal children, brother and sister. They are Bronzino’s portraits of Maria and Francesco de Medici, their features, the palette of their clothing, and the position of their hands nearly identical. The back and forth of the blinds suggests equality; vintage game pieces conveying the title offer a different take.

Other ironies are conveyed in works such as Knowledge/Power (2007).

Ornately framed between two sheets of glass, torn book pages represent the former while shredded currency signifies the latter. Both are fundamentally paper, but what a difference! In The Limits of Limitation (2008), folded and threaded book pages appear to break through the gate that would otherwise confine them in their elegant latticed box.

Szerlip has a penchant for “old” and otherwise unconventional materials, which she reworks, reconfigures, refinishes or otherwise

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bends to her needs. A recent work, Otto Octavius, Criminal Mastermind (2013), is a madcap imagining of a device by the Marvel Comics’ villain obsessed with destroying Spiderman. Using materials ranging from a Bakelite TV antenna, 1920s French erector set pieces, a magnifying glass, test tubes filled with comic book confetti, and a “surprise” glow-in-the-dark matrix (think radium), she has designed his Destruction Machine with careful craftsmanship and a wry sense of humor. Another recent work, Carnivore (2013) offers a different kind of “recycling,” and wit, with its teeth of vintage, waxed-paper hamburger sleeves.

Reliquary (2008), an ornate construction of wood, plaster and glass, is a fitting shrine for something the artist clearly values – books. Szerlip is an accomplished writer, editor, and two-time National Endowment for the Arts fellow. She has been working for some time on a book about maverick theatre and industrial designer Norman Bel Geddes, a chapter of which recently appeared in the prestigious Paris Review.

Bel Geddes was, interestingly enough, a visionary who, like Szerlip, enjoyed turning innovative ideas into imaginative, thought-provoking forms.

– DONNA SEAGER

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A Note from the Artist

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Four inlaid boxes by the artist’s father.

Barbara Alexandra Szerlip

In 2002, for no discernible reason, I began “playing around” with wood constructions. Armed with a few basic tools (two screwdrivers, a ruler, a level, a pencil, and a manual drill) and no overall plan, I taught myself, through trial and error, some rudimentary skills. Several years passed before it struck me that this new “hobby” had ties to my childhood and, in particular, to my father, who spent winter weekends, when the ground was frozen over and the golf course closed, down in his wellequipped basement workshop making things. Practical things, like closets, “built-ins” for the family den and once, an ambitious revolving stage for a community theater. A self-taught craftsman, he also created a series of inlaid boxes (using scraps of purple heart, zebrawood and other exotics), augmented with leather straps, for my mother to use as pocketbooks.

The “wood gene,” if there is such a thing, took its own sweet time manifesting.

By 2002, my father had been dead for decades. In the interim, my focus had been on literature. Somewhere along the way, the woodwork and the interest in literature clandestinely “mated,” giving birth to an odd breed of sculpture. Since then – still following instinct rather than planning – my tool collection has expanded, if slightly. My occasional use of phosphorescent paint is, perhaps, another childhood throwback. Summers in New Jersey were redolent with fireflies (what we called lightning bugs). Watching them flick on and off in the sultry dark

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evenings was, in my imagination, like seeing the constellations brought down to play out at arms’ length.

The pieces have proven surprisingly controversial. Some people have been irate at my “destruction” of books (while others, notably librarians, have called the work “extremely reverential”). Some arts professionals have complained that the pieces are “problematic,” being “neither art nor craft,” others that they’re “too finished” to look handmade. Thankfully, the San Francisco Center for the Book expressed none of these reservations.

Pressured for an explanation of just what it was I thought I was doing, I once wrote: There’s a tension created by taking an object designed for a very specific purpose (reading) and using it for an entirely different one; by using something flat, linear and abstract (dark lines on pages) to create something three-dimensional. If I’ve done my work well, that tension can harbor mystery, even wit. It can seduce.

Since then, the work has evolved. I’m not sure that really covers it anymore. I have, in any case, come to think of the pieces (and the pieces yet to come) as a belated legacy. I sometimes wonder what my father would make of them.

–B. ALEXANDRA SZERLIP

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A Visit to Mad Geppetto’s Workshop

Atlas #3 2008 16 x 6 inches

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Maps, linen cord, wood, copper sheeting, rotating base, quote from T.S. Eliot’s Four Quartets

Brush 2007 14 x 7 x 5.5 inches Wood, antique brush handle, book pages From the collection of Cathy DeForest

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Carnivore 2013 14 x 24 x 5 inches Wood, vintage hamburger sleeves

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Gender Will Always Be An Issue 2004 14 x 8 inches Wood, paper, vintage game pieces

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Glow-in-the-Dark Bibelot 2005 5.5 x 3.5 inches Japanese cedar, brass, satin cord, vintage French ribbon, seashell, book

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From the collection of T. J. Taylor

The Story Emerges From Its Pages Raised gold letters read: “Un jour, alors que le vieil homme traversait a cheval une foret inconnue . . .�

(Translation: One day, as the old man was riding through an unfamiliar forest . . .)

2006 15.5 x 13.25 x 10 inches Book, wood, vintage Chinese brass From the collection of Joy and Frank Purcell

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Improbable Machine (with feathers) 2007 16 x 6.125 x 15 inches

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Book, wood (walnut), magnifying glass, feathers, plastic tubing, copper wire, vintage engraving plate, machine part, laboratory equipment, brass finial, phosphorescent paint

Knowledge / Power 2006 16 x 12 x 12 inches Wood, glass, book pages, U.S. currency From the collection of Martin Muller

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The Limits of Limitation 2008 13.75 x 8 x 7.75 inches

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Book, teakwood, silk thread

La Marquise 2006 20.5 x 17 x 14 inches Book, wood, satin, mink, fabric, ribbon, 1950s typewriter erasers

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The Mystery of Animal Migration 2006 16 x 13.5 x 10.5 inches

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Book, deer antlers, map, vintage Chinese brass

Otto Octavius, Criminal Mastermind 2013 9 x 16 x 12.5 inches (antenna extends to 30 inches) Comic books, vintage hat mold, magnifying glass, oil gauge, 1920s French Erector Set pieces, brass, test tubes, Bakelite antenna, phosphorescent paint (see frontispiece for another view)

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Out of Africa 2007 21 x 16 inches

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Revolving base, two books, feathers, rusted nails, cowry shells, Japanese ropes, porcupine quills, vines, copper sheeting

Reliquary 2008 17.5 x 5.5 inches Wood, plaster, glass, 13 books

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