Rollins College Book Arts Collection

Follow

• 

  Comme les Francais: A Guide to Being French

  Not Listed

  Step into the world of "Comme Ed Français: A Guide to Being French," an artistically crafted book that unveils the charming intricacies of French culture with a touch of humor. Forget the conventional guides—this one is a witty journey through expressions, stereotypes, culinary delights, work-life balance, and the colorful tapestry of French slang. Have you ever wondered what it truly means to be French? This book breaks it down, providing you with helpful expressions that go beyond the basics. From the art of the casual shrug to the nuanced use of "merci," you'll be equipped with the linguistic tools to navigate everyday French life with flair. Les stéréotypes? Mais bien sûr! "Comme Ed Français" fearlessly explores the stereotypes associated with being French, debunking myths and revealing the truths behind the clichés.

• 

  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

• 

  Pist Protta 86/87

  Space Poetry

  The color brown is the mother of all colors, the first and last color in the universe. When you mix all the colors and stir everything together, you get brown.

  In the ideal world it is different, here all colors become gray when mixed, and in the world of light all colors become white light. But in the world of reality, the one we all find ourselves in with all its flaws and irregularities, all colors turn to brown. It is the inevitable outcome of color entropy, the coloristic terminus.

  We pay tribute to the color brown with nothing less than a double edition, PP86/PP87. It is so large that it simply cannot be contained in a single edition. In PP86 we have hand-mixed and printed an exclusive range of browns, 16 shades of brown that stand clean and substantial without frills. In PP87, we have asked 16 artists and writers to write a short text or comment on one of the brown colors that they have each been assigned.

• 

  The Plague Review Digest

  Ryan Standfest

  A hefty tome that collects all four issues of The Plague Review, a timely journal of immediate visual responses to the COVID-19 pandemic.

  "The Plague Review Digest™ is published by Rotland Press. It collects all four issues of the journal The Plague Review that were published from April to October, 2020. Each installment was originally released to the sheltered-in-place in the form of a free digital publication. These versions have been permanently removed from their online platform for this printed anthology."

  "The Plague Review is more mirror than morbid — the mosaic of emotions presented in its pages offer a panorama of the pandemic and the world as we experience it today." — PRINT Magazine

• 

  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

• 

  Pursuit of Wonders

  Andreas Züst and Mara Züst

  Andreas Züst (1947–2000) was fascinated by natural phenomena his whole life long. Even as a child he would stoically take note of the weather conditions three times a day. Later on, as a student of glaciology, he spent whole months at Thule in Greenland drilling ice cores—and shooting countless slides of his research work there. The resulting corpus of photographic material explores ice in a multitude of different forms and escapes determination, ranging from endless icescapes, freshly blown bright white snow, and ice crystals on a window to a glowing blue, a polar bear peering into the camera on an ice-covered beach, and an ice-bound research base camp under the light of the full moon. The opaque blue glow of ice (best viewed as originally presented in a slide show) epitomizes the otherworldly aura of these evocative images. The story of ice and that of a glaciologist’s life and work are told separately in Pursuit of Wonders, but tied together by the prevailing atmosphere of a surreal journey through a world of ice, rounded out by contributions by the film maker Peter Mettler, who was a friend of Züst’s, cultural studies scholar Verena Kuni as well as artists Jimena Croceri and Sarina Scheidegger.

• 

  Some Might Call It Love

  Megan Adie

  Scraps, Leftovers, Bits and Pieces: A Risograph Artist Book" by Megan Adie is a unique artist book that celebrates overlooked materials. This one-page book features a thick cover and backing with thin interior pages, creating a distinctive tactile experience. The pages are heavily textured through risograph printing, incorporating various found objects such as leaves, sticks, and string, alongside an intriguing triangular shape. Accompanied by Megan Adie's original text, the book transforms discarded and ignored elements into a compelling artistic exploration.

• 

  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.

• 

  Infirm

  Gwendolyn Brooks

  Infirm is part of a larger series of prints and books called "Claiming Grace" which address issues of disability, identity, and beauty.

  "The poem is a delight and as I quoted in the colophon ... it was printed 'with my own legs a-wobble. ...' Actually, that is a stretch, since I as a wheelchair user while printing on the Vandercook, it is my wheels that are a bit a-wobble reaching to insert the paper, but it made me smile, thinking both of my wobble, and as Gwendolyn says so beautifully, that we are all enough to be beautiful." — Terry Schupbach-Gordon

  "Somebody wrote to the library and asked that I find books with poems featuring handicapped people for a conference that was going to feature handicapped people. So, I decided I was going to try to write such a poem myself. I have a certain way of feeling about handicapped people. I feel that we're all handicapped to some degree in some dimension, so under the title I wrote 'For handicapped all.'" — Gwendolyn Brooks, Dickinson Electronic Archives

  "Gwendolyn Brooks is one of the most highly regarded, influential, and widely read poets of 20th-century American poetry. She was a much-honored poet, even in her lifetime, with the distinction of being the first Black author to win the Pulitzer Prize. She also was poetry consultant to the Library of Congress — the first Black woman to hold that position — and poet laureate of the State of Illinois." — www.poetry.foundation

• 

  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

• 

  Huracán

  Anyelmaidelin Calzadilla Fernández and Steven Daiber

  Steven Daiber: "The text forming the hurricane patterns are random digital coding and the 1823 quote from John Quincy Adams:

  "'There are laws of political as well as physical gravitation; and if an apple severed by its native tree cannot choose but fall to the ground, Cuba, forcibly disjoined from its own unnatural connection with Spain, and incapable of self-support, can gravitate only towards the North American Union which by the same law of nature, cannot cast her off its bosom.' - US Secretary of State John Quincy Adams, April 1823

  "Over printed on the reverse cover paper is an image of the 50 black flags installed in front of the US Interest Section in 2006 protested the Bush administration and an image of the US Embassy taken from where the flag poles were installed and removed in 2020."

  United States Interests Section in Havana, Wikipedia, 7/24/20: "The United States Interests Section of the Embassy of Switzerland in Havana, Cuba or USINT Havana … represented United States interests in Cuba from September 1, 1977, to July 20, 2015. It was staffed by United States Foreign Service personnel and local staff employed by the US Department of State, and located in a multi-story office building on the Malecón across from the Plaza de la Revolución in Havana. The mission resumed its role as the Embassy of the United States in Cuba on July 20, 2015, following the normalization of diplomatic relations between the two countries.

  "In January 2006, USINT Havana began displaying messages on a scrolling 'electronic billboard' in the windows of their top floor, including the George Burns quotation, 'How sad that all the people who would know how to run this country are driving taxis or cutting hair.' Following a protest march, the Cuban government erected a large number of poles, carrying black flags with single white stars, obscuring the messages. In June 2006, Granma International referred to the billboard as 'the systematic launching of the crudest insults of our people via the electronic billboard, which, in violation of the most elemental regulations of international law, they think they can maintain with impunity on the facade of that imperial lair.'

  "In June 2009, the electronic billboard was turned off, because according to the US State Department, the billboard was not effective in delivering information to the Cuban people."

• 

  Giant: A Deity With Leaves

  Rebecca Chamlee

  A towering native oak has stood in a nearby wildland park for over 400 years. This is the story of how the ancient tree became a cherished presence in the life of the artist; a source of wonder, mystery and connection to the natural world. The letterpress printing was done on the Vandercook Universal III power press using Centaur and Arrighi type, cast by M & H Type Foundry and Swamp Press, wood French Clarendon and photo polymer plates on Zerkall Book Wove, handmade Kitakata and Korean Hanji papers. The botanical pages are contact prints on Strathmore Aquarius II watercolor paper. The longstitch binding, sewn with hand-dyed Kinglet Cottage linen thread through a white oak spine, has a cover of contact printed and dyed handmade Indigo watercolor paper. The deluxe edition also includes the book housed in a hinged box, lined with Cave handmade paper, a Quercus lobata acorn and Quercus, a suite of prints concealed in a drawer. The acorn included in the deluxe box has been frozen for 12 months, baked for 8 hours and sealed.

• 

  Giant: a deity with leaves (Deluxe Edition)

  Rebecca Chamlee

  "A towering native oak has stood in a nearby wildland park for over 400 years. This is the story of how the ancient tree became a cherished presence in the life of the artist; a source of wonder, mystery and connection to the natural world. The letterpress printing was done on the Vandercook Universal III power press using Centaur and Arrighi type, cast by M & H Type Foundry and Swamp Press, wood French Clarendon and photopolymer plates on Zerkall Book Wove, handmade Kitakata and Korean Hanji papers. The botanical pages are contact prints on Strathmore Aquarius II watercolor paper. The long stitch binding, sewn with hand-dyed Kinglet Cottage linen thread through a white oak spine, has a cover of contact printed and dyed handmade Indigo watercolor paper. The deluxe edition includes the book housed in a hinged box, lined with Cave handmade paper, a Quercuslobata acorn and Quercus, a suite of prints concealed in a drawer. The acorn included in the deluxe box has been frozen for 12 months, baked for 8 hours and sealed." — Pie in the Sky Press

• 

  Paintworks

  Jonas George Christensen and Peter Olsen

  Paintworks (2010-18) is a series of photographic works by the artists Jonas Georg Christensen and Peter Olsen. The series shows their subtle paintings made directly on late modern industrial and public buildings in Denmark during the period 2010–18. Their intervention in the facades of the buildings is discreet and minimalist, and thus differs radically from the graffiti and the art works we are used to seeing in the public space.

  These big paintings are done in serial and as simple forms, in different variations of grey, white or black colour tones. They seem to be part of the building’s architecture, as they do not try to go against the lines of the walls or disturb the architecture in any other way. On the contrary, the paintings underline the aesthetic qualities of the walls, as well as of the surrounding space, and can be perceived as re-activating the surfaces of the building.

  The book Paintworks from 2019 is also exhibited in Mellanrummet. This book is a joint edition between Dokument Press and the publishing company Forlaget Emancipa(t/ss)ionsfrugten and contains a longer theoretical text by Carsten Madsen, associate professor at Aarhus University, as well as an introduction by Claus Peder Pedersen, who heads the research school at the School of Architecture in Aarhus.

• 

  This Is a Test

  Elsi Vassdal Ellis

  "This book is part of the ongoing WASTE NOT, WANT NOT series that begin with a stack of paper, the selection of possible art mounted type high, and inks on the shelves.

  "…A narrative was going to be included with the art, tucked into the negative spaces or onto the art. When the art printing was finished, I decided I didn't want to add the narrative. (Two different themes were developed and will be used for future WASTE NOT, WANT NOTS.) This was, after all, a test of the mounted art and the inks, adn to use up paper that had been sitting on my shelves since the early 1980s. The semi-random compositions, though not perfectly balanced, stand mostly on their own." — Elsi Vassdal Ellis

• 

  Leaves of Grass

  Lauren Emeritz

  Leaves of Grass, Abstract Orange Edition was published on May 31, 2019 in celebration of Walt Whitman’s 200th birthday.

  “The book explores ideas central to Walt Whitman's Leaves of Grass including transcendentalism, or the inherent goodness of nature, and realism, depicting familiar things as they are. It captures both the complexity and simplicity of nature by juxtaposing dimensional paper grass texture and a quote about nature and wonder. The book is not a reprinting of all of Whitman's words but an art object that encapsulates the feeling of Whitman." — Lauren Emeritz

  Although the box opens like a traditional book it becomes a triptych. The focus is the center which is a “shadow box” with several rows of cut green paper of various shades to resemble blades of grass. The box of grass is sided with a portrait of Whitman on the left with quote “All seems beautiful to me.” On the right is a quote from “Song of Myself” with a large 200 printed in the bottom right corner.

• 

  Old Tjikko

  Nicolai Howalt

  Containing 97 unique images made from the same photographic negative, the artist’s book Old Tjikko by Danish visual artist Nicolai Howalt is like no other. It’s a book about the oldest living organism known to man and a book about the instability of the photographic image and the enigmatic intertwinement of time, reality and perception.

  The tree, Old Tjikko, stands in a deserted landscape on a mountainside in Dalarna, Sweden, and is considered to be the oldest tree in the world with its impressive age of 9,600 years. A single photographic negative of this exceptional spruce has become the many different photographs in this book. By exposing the same image onto 97 different types of aged analogue light-sensitive photo papers – some dating back as far as the 1940’s – Nicolai Howalt has in Old Tjikko created a book, where the unpredictability of the long expired photographic papers has become an integral and dynamic part of each image.

  The result is an almost organic diversity of perception and expression: 97 different variations of the same motif ranging from gloomy black to ethereal white. Images where the uncontrollable silver halides in the papers create sudden appearances of meteor showers or landscapes seemingly shrouded in dense fog. Questioning the constancy of the photographic image and pointing to the subtle and often overlooked effects of its materiality on our perception, it is as if these imperfections of ageing in the papers reveal glimpses of a distant and different time. Dormant traces brought forth into the present by Howalt and the frozen millisecond of a recently captured photographic negative depicting a tree, which in itself stands as a living image of an almost incomprehensible timeline – the passing of millennia.

  Mycologist Henning Knudsen, philosopher Søren Gosvig Olesen and art historian Lars Kiel Bertelsen contributes to the publication with three essays placing the work in the context of natural sciences and biology, the philosophy of perception and the history of photography.

• 

  Reimagining the Narrative Through Pictures: Interracial Perspective

  Holly Jefferies

  "Reimagining the Narrative Through Pictures captures snapshots of the experimental creative writing within my art scrolls. Each picture encapsulates a piece of the experimental erasures, extractions of text, and streams of consciousness from each scroll in the collection, Reimagining the Narrative: A Contemporary Creative Collection of Interracial Perspective. As the viewer stands before the scrolls and their eyes scan and collect phrases and profound thoughts about interracial relations, they must walk away with only glimpses of the reimagined narrative. The snapshots within this visual collection of pictures allows the viewer to take away more of the collection than the mind can capture, allowing further contemplation and conversation. With this collection of pictures, the viewer may continue to engage with the narrative so that the words and images can be woven into the viewers’ own narratives just as they are reimagined and stitched into each scroll. As the artist and writer, I reimagine the narratives that have been told through history, and retell them through a new lens for the viewer, and I invite the viewer to do the same. Welcome to an experience in reimagining the narrative of interracial relations through pictures." - https://reimaginethenarrative.com/publishedwriting/

• 

  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.

• 

  Talisman (Deluxe Edition)

  Ellen Knudson

  Talisman is an artist’s book about the struggle of artistic isolation.

  "Talisman is an offering in support of artists and creative people that might be feeling alone in the world these days. Since 2016, as an artist (and as a human being) I have found it difficult to feel motivated while the worst traits of humanity have not only surfaced in our country, but are being celebrated. Writers and artists before us have lived through similarly poisonous times and created iconic works despite the tumultuous climate. Talisman is an amulet, a charm to keep with us. The linocut image of the boat-tailed grackle is intended to be a familiar spirit to guide us through rough territory. In times like these, it helps to keep our friends close." — Ellen Knudson

• 

  64 Sacred Views

  Tanja Koljonen

  In the book images are replaced with 64 words or sentences. The minimal, non-linear storyline hovers from general descriptions of a landscape and nature into more abstract views on human mind, memory and communication. Many sacred sites are loaded with mythohistorical narratives that make them appear as scenes and stages for history. Therefore, apart from being religious and historical touchstones, they are also powerful sociopolitical statements. When all the narratives of certain places are erased, the images and the story are left to be conjured by the reader and the world is to be constructed from within.

• 

  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.