Many book artists explore current social and political issues through their work. The Rollins Book Art Collection is intentionally an interdisciplinary teaching collection, directly supporting the College’s curriculum and its long tradition of liberal education. The purpose of the collection is to use art as a medium through which students can better understand multifaceted issues — global politics, economies, cultures; the tensions around social structures and marginalized populations; conflicts between human development and the environment; art as a concept, expression, and a communication tool; and other contemporary issues that students will encounter in their coursework and everyday lives.
The Rollins Book Art Collection is supported by a close collaboration between three entities on campus — The Department of Art & Art History, the Rollins Museum of Art, and the Olin Library — and is guided by an advisory board that includes students, staff, and faculty from across our campus community. It can be accessed in the Rollins College Archives and Special Collections reading room of Olin Library. The collection is also often on display in exhibitions (see a list below).
-
An Other Story
Ben Blount
"This project originated from Blount’s powerful artists book 'First Impressions' in which he asked participants to recount the first time they felt othered. Blount put the same question to students in Rachel Simmons’ book arts class in spring 2021. The students responded through personal writing & bold imagery, then designed and printed folios on their provisional presses using metal type and other relief printmaking materials. Their folios addressed a range of personal experiences with feeling demeaned and marginalized—culturally, physically, socially. They responded to the prompt with honesty and courage. For almost every student in class, this was their first time working with letterpress, and they were inspired to take on that challenge by Blount’s bold use of typography in his work. Blount designed & printed the striking covers and Simmons did the colophon and assisted with assembling the edition of 20. The book is now part of the Rollins Book Arts Collection. This project was made possible by a grant from the Rollins College Thomas P. Johnson Visiting Artist & Scholar Program." - Rachel Simmons
-
Visible Climate: Postcards from America's Changing Landscapes
Rachel Simmons and Lee Lines
"This interdisciplinary project was completed in 2020 by Lee Lines (geographer) and Rachel Simmons (artist), colleagues at Rollins College who have collaborated on environmentally themed visual art projects since 2010. 'Visible Climate' is the product of more than 175 hours of field work in our national parks, researching and documenting climate change impacts, followed by a collaborative process of translating visual evidence into an artists' book to shed light on the impacts of climate change in some of our nation’s most iconic landscapes. To create the work, Lines’ original digital photographs (and two historical national park images) were reduced to black and white, transferred to Stonehenge paper, hand-colored and then re-digitized by Simmons. This multi-step process created a selective loss of information and degradation, while the hand-colorization references and challenges romanticized landscapes from postcards produced when the parks were first mass marketed to early 20th century visitors. Lines’ handwritten captions — based on his field work in the parks— imagine the voices of park visitors over decades as they encounter changing habitats, receding glaciers, and drought-altered landscapes." - Rachel Simmons
-
Cover Your Mouth
Jacob Z. Wan
“Being Chinese and gay, I explore sexuality, relationships, and balance from personal experience through mixed-media book arts. 'Cover Your Mouth' was made with a face mask as the cover and text printed on one long page with stitches. COVID-19 has affected 2020 with tragedies and inconveniences, yet President Trump did not take the pandemic seriously and blamed China for everything. I printed out a speech from President Trump and stitched-out lines with red threads to emphasize the narrative. By altering the text, the speech reveals the truth and facts of the pandemic, instead of blaming others with hatred.” - Jacob Z. Wan
-
Women March
Gail Watson
"This book is a photographic record of the 2017 and 2018 Women’s March held in Denver, Colorado as a rebuke and resistance to the election of Donald J. Trump. I attended the first March with a number of friends from my mountain community and the 2018 March with my niece and her young daughter; 3 generations of women making our voices heard. My favorite group chant was 'We need a leader, not a creepy tweeter.' The book is thirteen pages of full-bleed photographs digitally printed on cover paper and two pages of Canson Mi-tientes letterpress printed in white ink. The cover is binders board die cut with a window filled with a pink fake fur “pussy hat” and with a linen bookcloth spine. The front and back cover are foil-stamped." - Gail Watson
-
Inception
Islam Aly
"Inception is inspired by stories and journeys of the refugees. It is a bilingual codex in English and Arabic. The book is based on the twelfth-century Persian verse poem 'The Conference of the Birds' written by Farid Aldin Al-Attar. The poem is about the search for truth and integrity, which is parallel to the refugee’s quest to re-discover themselves. Birds meet to begin searching for their perfect king. But to find him, they need to start a difficult journey. The birds show their doubts and fears to their lead, the hoopoe. He encouraged and supported the birds to be confident, grateful, and honest. The birds start a wondrous journey that only 30 of them completes, they eventually recognize that their king is each of them and all of them. The English text is adapted from Afkham Darbandi translation. The Arabic text is adapted from Badee Mohamed Gomaa Arabic translation 'Manteq Al Tayr.' The bird images represented are from medieval Islamic artwork. Arabic Calligraphy is done by Abdul Karim and Sabri. Inception was made as part of Swarthmore College’s Friends, Peace, and Sanctuary project. Major support for Friends, Peace, and Sanctuary has been provided by The Pew Center for Arts & Heritage with additional support from Swarthmore College Libraries, the Lang Center for Civic and Social Responsibility, the William J. Cooper Foundation, and the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation." - Islam Aly
-
Advice for Travelers
Aileen Bassis
In the accordion-bound art book "Advice for Travelers," Aileen Bassis samples one of her poems and brings it to life on paper. The book is twelve pages long and includes photographs, texts, and different shapes on all pages. The text is centered around the idea of "advice" for those who are travelling, with resonating phrases such as "remember a blanket, for nowhere will be soft" alluding to the troubles that immigrants will face when they come to new countries.
-
The Radiant Republic
Sarah Bryant
"In these texts, separated by more than two thousand years, Plato and Le Corbusier each describe a city plan designed to provide a framework for morality and ethics. These works are revered, but they are also deeply troubling. In The Radiant Republic, language from Plato and Le Corbusier has been combined to create a narrative in five parts. Each part is bound separately, and features a portion of an interlocking landscape with no fixed beginning or end." - Big Jump Press
-
Corruption
Christopher Kit Maddox
Corruption by Christopher Kit Maddox is an anthology of ten hostile statements made by powerful world leaders. Each chapter relays the message from 80 languages via machine translation systems, gradually transforming hateful speech into vague and powerless quotations. The final page of each chapter concludes with a revitalized poetic interpretation of the chapter’s message. Vibrant and busy spreads balance the intense, word-heavy collections of art as text, bringing process poetry to life. The book includes a small pamphlet insert entitled "We Will Bury You," explaining the actual meaning and misinterpretations behind the infamous quote of Nikita Khrushchev where intent was lost through translation and interpretation.
-
Cross Words
Emily Martin
Cross Words is an 8-page paper book by Emily Martin. The front cover displays the title "Cross Words" and the end cover contains an artist message. The structure of the print is a simple crossword, placed in the center of each page. Martin uses the paper to create a book based on diverse subject matter related to social, cultural, and political issues, including but not limited to Christianity, missionaries, globalization, and world cultures. This book is made of a specialized paper provided by Andrew Honey, a conservator at the Bodleian Library in Fall 2018.
-
One Hundred Excellent Flowers
Clifton Meador
This piece is a very innovative and encouraging way to take a look at issues that have long plagued relationships between people and their leaders. This work references a speech that was given by Mao Zedong in 1957, titled “On the Correct Handling of Contradictions Among the People." Within this speech, Mao referenced letting 100 flowers bloom, a poetic phrase intended to promote and invite the citizens to vocalize their criticism on the Communist leadership at the time. Following this speech, an anti-rightist movement erupted in China wherein all of the people who were “enticed” by this poem and promise of understanding were publicly shamed or stripped of all of their assets. Meador’s approach to the topic stemmed from anger within his own life. He decided the work “One Hundred Excellent Flowers” should discuss this sense of “trickery” in a more modernized and Americanized fashion: how politics and marketing lie to the American consumer. Meador attempts to display processed snack foods in the same light that the flowers were displayed within Zedong’s speech. Meador wanted to suck the audience in and make them understand that consumerism is a temptation and a seduction that we should avoid before it is too late and we have lost ourselves and our bodies to the entities that are beginning to kill us.
-
On the Verge: Florida Scrub Jay
Maryann Riker
"'On the Verge' is a series of artist's books that follows the original series of 'Winged Ghosts' that encompassed extinct bird species. This series explores bird species that are 'on the verge' of extinction as defined by the National Audubon Society. Bird numbers can be lower than 10,000 or as low as a mating pair. 'On the Verge: Florida Scrub Jay' is a continuation of the Winged Ghosts artist book series on extinct bird species and "The Immigration/Invasive Species" artist books that compared immigration waves to invasive bird species introduced into New York City. I chose to use the old book covers with miniature handles and file label holders to replicate the look of vintage scientific specimen drawers and old ledger journals. This particular artist book highlighting the plight of the Florida scrub jay speaks to the causes of its endangered species status according to the National Audubon Society. Birds are the first link to reflect changes in environment and they serve as a warning sign to humanity as to how pesticides, urban encroachment, and climate change can devastate a species or change its natural environment. With a poem by Nancy Scott, Easton, PA, entitled 'Count Up, Count Down'.'" -Maryann Riker
-
Set of Zines: Women of NASA
Maryann Riker
"Celebrating the women of NASA who put men in space and on the moon, these 5 zines honor those who worked behind the scenes, became astronauts and lost their lives in the pursuit of science. This one-sheet book structure with various pink-shaded-cardstock covers also includes an acrostic poem by Nancy Scott of Easton, PA. The Women of NASA zines were inspired by my friend, Nancy Scott, poet and essayist who resides in Easton, PA (there is another Nancy Scott who resides in Trenton, NJ and is also a poet). Nancy is blind (has been blind since birth) and is also a NASA nerd who listens to NASA TV to report on space walks, missions, etc., which is then rebroadcast across the country through a service providing news to the visually impaired. I have included Nancy's poetry in many of my artist books. When discussing possible zine ideas, she had mentioned the 50th anniversary of the first woman working for NASA and NASA's celebration of this landmark. So I decided to commemorate the women of NASA and do a zine set dedicated to them. And, this is the result." - Maryann Riker
Zines: The Human Computers, Spacey Women, Spacey Women 2, Spacey Women 3, In Memoriam
-
The Gaze Measured
Maryann Riker
"This artist book celebrates the unnamed and unknown women photographers who ran portrait studios, documented landscapes and took selfies! The only documentation are the photographs they left behind. Entrepreneurs and selfie takers documented their world while giving women the chance to use the newest technology! The book was inspired by an article regarding women and the lasting images they created at the turn of the century and yet who remained unnamed. History regarded the first selfie taken by a man in Philadelphia but no woman was recorded except for a few who propelled the new medium and made commercial successes from their ventures into it. Having studied photography at a time when one developed their own images, it was amazing that for the amount of women who took photography, many were not included in fine art photography exhibitions or counted as important in their field until after the women's movement. How sad...so, this is my little ode commemorating them and their endeavors.
"The front cover is an actual brownie camera front with a woman gazing out at us measuring up for the perfect snap! Enjoy this book designed as a photo book in its images of the early unnamed female pioneers of photography.
"Includes a poem by Nancy Scott, Easton, PA." - Maryann Riker
-
Units
Sara Smith
"Units is a set of 27 letterpress printed cards in a folded enclosure. The concept is based on the repurposing of architecture and the seemingly interchangeable lives conducted within. On one side of the cards is the outside of a building (loosely based on downtown White River Junction, VT). The other side of the cards show the people and activity on the inside. Some cards even show the top and bottom views of the goings on. The cards are slotted to allow assembly of different buildings and configuration of occupants. Pen and ink illustrations, letterpress printed with photo polymer plates on French Speckletone paper." - https://mcbaprize.org/sarah-smith-units/
-
Xenagogy X
Jessica Spring
"X has never been common in the English language, and just .02 percent of the dictionary begins with this rare letter. For letterpress printers using wood type, the X is often missing from a font, or the poor sort has had its reverse side surrendered for carving a sorely needed A or E instead. During a residency at Shooting Star Press in Little Rock, Arkansas, I had the opportunity to explore the huge wood type collection, full of rare and exotic specimens. Inspired by the extraordinary xenodochy (hospitality) of my hosts in contrast to our country’s disturbing xenophobia (fear of foreigners), I set out to create Xenagogy X, a guidebook. Words led by the letter X are surrounded by their definitions and framed by X specimens, all bound in an X-cordion. An independent variable, an unknown value, the letter X serves to expand and excite." - Jessica Spring
-
One Day - Un Día
Alex Apella
"One Day is a book about death and also about hope. The bilingual collages document/portray the raw, loving, brutal, sensitive, intense story of the last day of Alex’s grandfather’s life, which he photographed without knowing it, and the last days of her mother's life, as she succumbed to Leukemia. Trying to describe the book in its poetic and visual depth may be as difficult as trying to describe the feelings and emotions surrounding the departure-farewell of a loved one. The first person narrative Alex uses to tell her story is a visual, bilingual, layered voice of her own creation that she has been building book by book in recent years. Her way of combining Spanish and English simultaneously, the two languages in which she speaks and thinks every day, situates the reader in a place of uncomfortable commitment, and obligates us to face both languages, and to discover just how much we actually do understand. Alex documents the story with photographs from her family archive, which dialogue with each other, interweaving senses that travel from one photo to the next and that the reader completes with their own images / memories, inevitably envisioned as the pages are turned. Alex's book will make you return to those moments, with sadness, with tears of emotion, and you will feel accompanied. You will understand that the devastating impotence of not being able to do anything except be present as events unfold, somehow unites us as humanity. That time heals, that remembering and looking back strengthens. That we are not alone." - Barbi Couto
-
#Great Again #Believe Me
Karen Hanmer
"From Access Hollywood through the Mueller investigation to white nationalist support, the Jacob’s Ladder #Great Again #Believe Me documents contemporary American personalities, pronouncements, slogans, scandals, policies and crimes, complemented by the metaphor of a deconstructing US Capitol. Housed in clamshell of archival board." - https://abecedariangallery.com/store/product/karen-hanmer-great-again-believe-me/
-
Nature Nurture
Lyall Harris
Close-up images are paired in a series of photographs by the artist to illustrate similarities between objects from the natural world and her young children. Intriguing parallels are drawn in this image-only accordion.
-
Existential Jukebox
L. K. James
Existential Jukebox is a collection of drawings, sketches, and phrases that are printed on sketching paper. "In the spring of 2018, I printed and published a 100-page book using a RC 6300 Risograph at Outlet. The publication is a collection of drawings and writing called Existential Jukebox: self-portrait in the year of the dog. " - L.K. James
-
202-456-1111
Jason Lazarus
"Since the inauguration of the 45th President of the United States, I have been creating photograms. The text that repeats throughout these images, 202-456-1111, is the White House phone number, which began the current administration disconnected. I’m not sure if photograms is the exact term for these works. A friend called them chemigrams, but after looking it up, I learned that chemigrams are made in full light. These are made quickly, like a protest sign, and in the dark. They are made with arms and legs that have a rare congenital condition, arthrogryposis, the same one that NY Times reporter Serge F. Kovaleski—who 45 mocked on November 25, 2015—lives with. The repetition of resistance requires very close scrutiny. The lives of the targets of this administration are infinite, complex, and irreducible. When we become students of these lives, as well as our own, the multitude of details we discover implores us to become more fully formed and in formation with each other." - Jacob Lazarus, 2018
-
Foraged
Val Lucas
"FORAGED is a new book from Bowerbox Press, showcasing 7 wild edible foods with wood engravings and hand-set type. Featured are: Wineberry, Morel, Wood-sorrel, Chanterelle, Wild Blueberry, Chicken of the Woods, and Hen of the Woods, with an introductory essay." - Bowerbox Press
-
The Proposition of Landscape
Melissa Wagner-Lawler
"In this project, Wagner-Lawler uses a work held in UWM's Special Collections entitled The Grammar of Ornament by Owen Jones published in 1856 and the American Geographical Society Library Digital Map collections. By researching map images of the land boundaries of the areas and ornamentation covered in The Grammar of Ornament, new visual landscapes are created using the decorative ornaments from the text. The artist book takes a small sampling of ornaments from each of the twenty sections of the text and places them into a landscape created out of the reinterpreted boundaries of each country or region. In addition to using the ornamentation from The Grammar of Ornament, the artist book also incorporates some of Jones’ thirty-seven design propositions set forth in his book. These propositions dictate Jones’ suggested best methods for using color and composition in relation to the ornamentation. In the artist book, twenty of these propositions are used to dictate and manipulate the composition of each page. The numbers on each page of the artist book reference the Jones’ propositions." - Artist Website
-
Questions for America
Aileen Bassis
"The 2016 presidential election left me shocked, dismayed and profoundly unmoored. I suddenly felt that I didn't understand my country….Each [page] has a different question." - Aileen Bassis.
-
First Impressions
Ben Blount
Ben Blount's book, First Impressions, takes a look inside an array of many different people's experiences facing prejudice due to their race. Blount accounts stories of young children to the elderly facing racial discrimination. He writes that they are "personal stories of people's first experience being the 'other.'"
-
Racial Activity Coloring Book
Ben Blount
An 8-page coloring book "for kids of all ages" designed to show its users the world through a racial lens. With activities such as a word search, crossword puzzle, and a coloring section, Ben Blount uses an everyday item, a coloring book, as a tool to teach users about racism.