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  Everything Has a Language

  Marnie Powers-Torrey

  "Printed from around 75 found objects, this book sculpture is a conglomerate of the past and a document of the here and now. Each of these objects carries its own narrative, inherent to its current shape and surface, told through stamped ink. The form is Hedi Kyle's interlocking loops structure." — Marnie Powers-Torrey Powers-Torrey lets objects speak for themselves, perhaps even among themselves. It is up to the human reader to make their own meaning, and both the artist and reader leave their mark on the book as they do this. The balance of this deeply personal, embodied meaning-making with the sense that the book’s images recede infinitely beyond translation is a productive and enjoyable tension.

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  (UN)NATURAL

  Claudia Prado

  "As said by Krystyna Wasserman, 'to make books is to create physical form for ideas,' and this artist book embodies that ideology as it focuses on the ideas I have formed through a college semester learning about the different perspectives and argumentations on the ethics of biomedical enhancements, the specifics of gene mutation, make-up, replication, and the such, as well as laboratory research on gene editing using CRISPR technology. One argumentation opposing biomedical enhancements that eluded me was the idea that these interventions were wrong because they were unnatural, and by implementing them we were taking for granted the giftedness of a life we weren’t wholly responsible for having. So, the two-sided accordion named 'NATURAL' AND 'UNNATURAL' show how on one hand what is perceived as a ‘natural’ gene mutation in the body can come to damage it by creating cancerous cells, and on the other hand what is perceived as an ‘unnatural’ gene edit and mutation using CRISPR technology can be implemented to kill cancerous cells and cure someone of the disease. The square, solid, and symmetrical structure of the accordion reference the solidity of gene framework, while also addressing the equal importance of both perspectives on the matter. The cartoony style of the images and the included explanatory text are a way of allowing a broader audience unfamiliar to the biological specifics of gene mutation/editing to understand the processes to thoroughly question if the natural is truly good and the unnatural fundamentally bad, and what it could mean when questioning the ethics of biomedical enhancements." — Claudia Prado

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  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

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  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

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  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

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  Temporada

  Rosaura Rodríguez

  "Narrativa gráfica ilustrada autobiográfica sobre el Huracán María en Puerto Rico." Autobiographical illustrated graphic narrative about Hurricane Maria in Puerto Rico.

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  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/

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  Memory Lame

  Jessica Spring

  Memory Lame focuses on retention and loss of memory. The book structure must be built by the reader with content emanating from a central, pentagonal memory palace—the most common mnemonic place system—aided by cues of geometric shapes and large numerals. Surrounding the palace are excerpts from Rhetorica ad Herennium, the oldest known book on rhetoric and memory. Billy Collins’ poem “Forgetfulness” is repeated in each chapter, the text moving from black to gray as the reader circles the book. Common mnemonic devices tease the memory, printed on sheets of handmade Saint-Armand. Tucked in each chapter are illustrations of plants that improve cognitive function, printed on transparent abaca. Text set in geometric shapes share the author’s grueling experience of cognitive and memory testing.

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  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

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  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

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  Hinde

  Zven Balslev

  N/A

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  Home

  Christine Cole

  This zine was printed in Futura Font by Rollins Print Services to exhibit at the Orlando Zine Fest on December 15, 2018 in Orlando, Florida. An exploration of the idea of who, what, how, where, before, now, what could be "home." Collected and designed by Christine Cole, @stinecole.

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  #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/

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  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.

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  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

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  Kompendium 37

  Åse Eg Jørgensen

  In the 19th century Norwegian sawmills started to produce ready-made houses in kit form for export. Norwegian businessmen established in Seyðisfjörður started importing these buildings — both as homes, business premises and public buildings. The many preserved, colorful, Norwegian-style wooden houses covered in corrugated iron, render Seyðisfjörður unique in Iceland.

  Import to Iceland of corrugated iron from England began in 1870. First it was used on roofs mainly, but soon the locals also started to clad walls with it in order to protect the timber. After the turn of the 20th century, following "Bruninn mikli" or "the Great Fire" that destroyed 12 houses in central Reykjavik, regulations were changed to avoid further catastrophes. Regulations demanded fireproof material fo rbuilding and corrugated iron provided the perfect shell. Light, strong, resistant and inexpensive, the corrugated iron also protects the timber beneath from harsh weather conditions, while letting it breathe, thus providing a natural ventilation system of sorts.

  The photos in this compendium are depicting gables rather than facades of the buildings, showing the ease with which a wooden structure can be penetrated with windows — or covered up. The forms, the rythms and the proximity of the mountains are exceedingly playful.

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  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

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  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

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  How To Lose It All at Once

  Amy Pirkle

  "How to Lose it All at Once features excerpts from a longer piece of non-fiction by my twin sister, Sara Pirkle Hughes, about the experience of losing all of her hair while going through chemotherapy at age 33. We began work on this book during the summer of 2017 at The Anderson Center in Red Wing, Minnesota, where we were surrounded by endless fields of dandelions. The dandelions transitioning from bright gold flowers to white orbs to wisps floating on the wind seemed to illustrate her text beautifully.

  "Each two-page spread in the book is a full-bleed reduction linocut, with letterpress text printed on top. " — Amy Pirkle

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  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

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  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.

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  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.'"

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  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.

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  Biosphere

  Ginger Burrell

  Biosphere is contained within a 9.25 x 4.25 x 2.125" wooden hinged box. This box is separated into two sections by a wooden piece. Sections contain a Coptic bound book on the left side and four wooden spheres with accordion books on the right side. The contents of the book include 60 instructions on how to save the planet. Each different colored sphere is halved to contain an accordion-structure book and has a magnetic closure. Coptic-bound book: 64 pages, printed inkjet on Rives BFK paper, Dark Courier font, cloth-covered boards, patterned paper pastedowns.

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  The Record

  Anne Covell

  "On January 20th, 2017, Donald J. Trump was sworn in as the 45th president of the United States. That same day, the official White House website (whitehouse.gov) began the digital transition to archive and replace Obama’s policies with those of the new administration. Immediately, people began to notice that key issues such as health care, education, and immigration were nowhere to be found. Keyword searches for terms such as “climate change,” “LGBT,” and “civil rights” all returned 404 errors. Even more conspicuously, the Spanish-language version and the disabled-accessible version of the site were no longer available. Internet Archive, a non-profit digital library that has been archiving webpages since 1996, captured 167 snapshots of whitehouse.gov that day. This book records the last snapshots taken of Obama’s policies before they came down, the 404 errors that followed, as well as the Internet Archive timestamps for when the information was last available and when it disappeared." - Anne Covell