Follow

• 

  Made Up

  Ellen Knudson

  "Made Up is a non-scientific science book about the imaginary cellular composition of the human body. Fourteen cells are illustrated:

  "Anger, Curiosity, Failure, Fear, Jealousy, Joy, Knowledge, Location, Love, The Past, Success, Talent, Trust, Work.

  "The cell images are vibrant multi-block and reduction linoleum prints with a diagram explaining how each cell operates. The text is playfully pseudo-scientific and presents theories about the attributes that 'make up' a person.

  "The inspiration for Made Up stems from a general fascination with how things are constructed. I often think about how people are similar and how we are different, and wonder how those similarities and differences occur. I had been drawing cells in my sketchbook and formed the idea of imaginary, emotional cellular structures that might 'make up' a person. I listed fourteen types of cells (Anger, Curiosity, etc) and wrote text for each cell using indirectly scientific language. To further support the pseudo-scientific nature of the books' content, I used a non-digital form of image creation for the cells — multi-block linoleum cuts." — Ellen Knudson

• 

  Natural / Un-Natural

  Thomas Parker Williams

  "Prints of twenty-four painted panels, executed with dry pigments in alkyd medium, represent events affecting our environment and actions exacerbating these events. Each panel is divided into two sections to give two possible visual interpretations. Events described by the panels are: extra-terrestrial impacts, solar storms, volcanic activity, eruptions, earthquakes, tsunamis, wind, dust storms, rain, flooding, hurricanes, storm surges, tornadoes, blizzards, drought, wildfires, earth shifting events, glacier melting and calving, permafrost melting, and sea level rise. The climate is changing, we cannot control the events that threaten our environment but we could have controlled our actions. Now we may be powerless to stop this process." - Thomas Parker Williams

• 

  Orientation Cube

  Islam Aly

  "Orientation Cube is inspired by The Kaaba, a cuboid building at the center of Islam's most sacred mosque, in Mecca, Saudi Arabia. It is the most sacred point within this most sacred mosque, making it the most sacred location in Islam. Wherever they are in the world, Muslims are expected to face the Kaaba when performing prayers. In addition one of the Five Pillars of Islam, every Muslim is required to perform the hajj pilgrimage at least once in his or her lifetime, if one is able. Multiple parts of the hajj require pilgrims to make circumambulation seven times around the Kaaba. A tiny black cube is positioned at the center of the inner back board, around which are concentric circles cut in the thirty sections of the book to reflect the process of circumambulation." - Islam Aly

• 

  The Weekly Rituals of a Domestic Goddess

  Maryann Riker

  "In the weekly schedule of the post-World War II American housewife, a strict regimen of daily activities ruled her life. This ensured a clean and organized home that was the foundation of a happy husband and clean and healthy children. (Or at least, that is what the advertising images promised.) Enjoy this small tome as a celebration of time-honored weekly rituals for domestic goddesses that many women followed to keep a well-organized home! A fun little tome that is based on my mother and aunt's rituals for their weekly chores. It never ceased to amaze me how strictly they adhered to this as well as to their friends and neighbors. It was an unwritten code that Mondays were wash day, Tuesday, ironing, etc. Sundays were reserved for church, visiting, long Sunday drives or just relaxing...and, I couldn't find many images of women relaxing! Imagine that...” - Maryann Riker

• 

  Never Flinch: A Visual Journal

  Rachel Marie Simmons

  "Never Flinch is an autobiographical visual journal that I published as a print on demand book through in 2014. A visual journal is a marriage of writing and art; a playground for a busy, creative mind; an amplification of your inner voice; a record of your experiences; a regular meeting over coffee between you and yourself. Through a rich layering of mixed media drawing, printmaking and collage, this self-reflective journal immerses the reader in a colorful narrative about life, art, science, travel and family. In my journal practice, I use a wide variety of materials and techniques. I write the text using a stream of consciousness, timed writing approach, and then visualize the writing through collage, image transfers, wax resist, linoleum prints, ink wash, acrylic, watercolor, drawing and erasure poetry." - Rachel Marie Simmons

• 

  Pist Protta 75

  Space Poetry

  This time, the editors have been working with scissors and knives themselves - and under the influence of the general dystopia of the outside world, it has become a veritable do-it-yourself disaster.

  No text except in the press release, which includes an extract from a hitherto unpublished conversation between Gordon Matta-Clark and Michael Crichton from around 1973. The conversation has been translated by Jacob Lillemose.

• 

  52

  Karen Zimmermann

  "52 Fifty-two (52) is a book created to define my identity through places, people, personal and historical events within a book structure. On the year of my fifty-second birthday I found myself with a group of friends exploring Robert Smithson's Spiral Jetty in Utah. We each made a pact to make a book. I decided, that the book would be about where I was and where I had been. I also reflected on the significance of the number (52) and its implications. It is a narrative as the book is sequenced through the years. All family lineage is broken and the percents are touched upon as my daughter could be 52/48% Caucasian/Nuxalk (a North West Canadian Aboriginal group). This measuring, like counting, is abstract. How I deal with the subject is through an abstract narrative using collage, also a metaphor for so many countless things." — Karen Zimmermann

• 

  Why You Can’t Get Married: An Unwedding Album

  Nava Atlas

  "This limited edition artist’s book examines the issue of same-sex marriage through the lens of the past. The very arguments used to oppose interracial marriage in generations past have been recycled for use against same-sex marriage. Comparing state codes, legal opinions, public hearings, and political pronouncements, it becomes apparent that the arguments aren’t just similar, but nearly identical. The book ends with Mildred Loving’s statement on the 40th anniversary of the 1967 Supreme Court decision, Loving vs. Virginia, which legalized interracial marriage in all fifty states. She stated in part, 'I believe all Americans, no matter their race, no matter their sexual orientation, should have [the] freedom to marry.' The Unwedding Album’s prettiness stands in stark contrast to the ugliness of the language of bias framed within, a reminder that there’s still a way to go to before the right to marry by same-sex couples is a given. As even in the wake of the 2015 Supreme Court decision legalizing same-sex marriage in all fifty states, continued efforts to roll it back with 'religious freedom' laws make it clear that universal acceptance is not yet at hand." - Nava Atlas

• 

  The Presence of their Absence

  Miriam Schaer

  This 90 page, full color, hard cover artist book explores society's prejudice against women without children, using original photography, research and the artist's writings.

• 

  Hestebogen

  Myne Søe-Pedersens

  An artist book containing images of negatives found in a photographic archive. As time has passed they have become glued together and are now bundled up in layers of transparent paper. On several of the negatives is written ’Hestebogen’ (’The Horsebook’), hence the title of the artist book. Kasimir Malevich’s work Black Square from 1915 is a huge inspiration to the work. The black square was the ‘zero of form’; a space for projections of feelings and associations.

• 

  From Right to Left

  Wendy Fernstrum

  "From Right to Left is an artist book about the effects of changing one's dominant hand. Through the personal narrative, I tell the story of why and how I switched from my right to my left as my dominant hand. I wrote this narrative using both my right and left hands, then scanned the handwriting, made photopolymer plates, and printed it letterpress.

  "Other text in the book describes the use of the right and left hands in our culture and explains the effects in the brain of changing dominant hands.[On pages 9 and 10] I drew the two neurons using my left hand, then scanned the drawings, made plates, and printed them letterpress. The background neuron was drawn dot by dot and screenprinted.

  "This is the first artist book where I combined both screenprinting and letterpress printing. ... [Pages 13 and 14] shows a book within a book. The small book was letterpress printed using text excerpted from Light on Life, a book about yoga by B.K.S. Iyengar. The text explains the need for balance between the right and the left sides of the body. The small book is sewn into the drumleaf binding used for the larger book." — Wendy Fernstrum

• 

  Subject/Verb/Object

  Ellen Knudson

  Subject / Verb / Object is a word game that grew from a need to process feelings of anger. The game has no beginning, no end, and no way to win. The turning, fitting, and order of words can lead to clarity or confusion. The reader plays with language and considers some of the options about what we all want, need, and have.

  The concept behind the book stems from the frustration and anger I feel towards art criticism and other academic writing. Academic language seems intended to control its audience, exclude "outsiders", and is not meant to clarify the subject for a reader. It takes the beauty and passion out of language and, in turn, out of people. Subject/Verb/Object pokes at this idea by doing something similar: it uses simplistic language and structure to force the reader to attempt a visual organization of the things we cannot put in order: our desires.

• 

  Ten Thousand Things, Volume No. 45

  Karen Kunc

  “My work as an artist/printmaker addresses issues of the landscape and our natural surroundings as direct influences from my Nebraska heritage, my daily experiences and viewpoints in the landscape of the plains and from extensive travel, and as artistic interpretation and contemplation on larger issues of the eternal life struggle, of endurance and vulnerability, growth and destruction. My prints suggest extremes of weather and natural forces at work, a sense of the micro/macrocosm, set against landscape or space, both wild and cultivated, intimate and unknowable. I am interested in the span of time it takes to wear away a canyon, build a mountain, the erosion forces that continually wash onto the plains, forming the earth, and, ultimately, shaping our world. My hope is that these larger concepts are provoked by viewing my work with a poetic and intelligent sense of wonder. My symbolic images are derived from a rich mix of instilled influences, born at home, and greatly expanded and contextualized from seeing life lived the world over, my experiences and past work, and issues in contemporary art. I recognize a host of associations that flow out of my work and are research interests for me - from nature and science, spiritual and religious thought, art historical and modern icons, immigration narratives and native myths.” - Karen Kunc

• 

  De Las Putas Confesiones (On the Professions of Strumpets)

  Mado Reznik

  "This book has been dreamt as a playing poem. Many years ago I traveled to the town where my mother was born looking for her story and my roots. I got acquainted with the woman who ran a Museum of Immigrants. I took several photos from an old Public Record of Prostitutes, which at the time (the early beginning of the last century) was a law, i.e., every woman that worked as prostitute had to be registered. That was made with my first digital camera.

  "A couple of years later I selected some of the pictures and I wrote poems about their dreams and secret wishes. With that in mind I decided to put them names of minor Greek goddesses but for one, the very well-known Helena. I always had the idea of making a playing work. So in 2001 I set a digital movie with the pictures and the poems.

  "In 2012 I went back to those faces and words and I made this artist book. This is a box with cubes. When the box is opened there is a mirror with the title for the people to see their own image. Each cube has on their sides the texts and two intaglio photogravures both on Japanese Tengujo paper and handmade paper. This superposition creates a depth effect as if it were a holographic image. There are also two velvet cubes that work as jokers or wild cards. In the end all is nothing but chance." — Mado Reznik

• 

  A Throw of the Dice will Never Abolish Chance (Ein Würfelwurf kann den Zufall nicht abschaffen)

  Daniela Deeg and Cynthia Lollis

  Inspired by a 19th century work by Stéphane Mallarmé as reinterpreted by 20th century Belgian artist Marcel Broodthaers, this project by long-time collaborators Lollis and Deeg prompts an examination of how a book’s sensory characteristics impacts the reader’s experience. Screenprinted on matte translucent pages that crinkle loudly when turned, the sequence of fragmented synonyms in English, Dutch, French and German words are layered with flattened representations of objects and spaces. Though the reader can see through overlapping text and imagery, the transparent pages create more confusion than clarity. Spreads open in unexpected ways or not at all, occasionally obscuring images printed on hidden folds. The random sequence of ideas challenges readers’ expectations about narrative structure while evoking the discomforts of tourism, feeling unable to access a real understanding of a strange place while simultaneously breathing in all the unfamiliar sights and sounds.

• 

  Animals in Peril: Images of Our Friends Who May Be Leaving Us

  Tom Knapp

  "In producing this book of images of some of my favorite animals, I hope to draw attention to their plight, and perhaps contribute in some small way to their survival. These wonderful creatures deserve and need our help if they are able to remain with us, and I am indeed grateful to all the people who dedicate their time and effort in this regard." — Tom Knapp

  "Animals in Peril is an important book. It is a necessary book. And it is, even today, a timely book. Although it may be little in size, consisting of thirty original etchings by the artist, it is large in its purpose and goal. It preserves images of some of the planet's many endangered animals and it is a call to action for concerned citizens worldwide." — Jon Looney, Preface

  Each etching is accompanied by biographical information of the animal illustrated. Among the animals included are Giant Panda, Galapagos Tortoise, Gavial, and Salt Water Crocodile.

• 

  Felling the Mammoth Tree of Calaveras Country

  Clifton Meador

  "The Giant Sequoia of the Sierra Nevada mountains are survivors of the last period of climate change. These huge trees used to be widespread - they grew all over the continental United States. As the climate changed during the Pleistocene Epoch, their range became limited to the western slopes of the Sierra Nevada at an altitude of 3,000 to 8,000 feet. They now survive solely in groups called groves, and there are only about 70 groves left. They are among the largest living things ever to have existed on Earth: one tree in Sequoia National Park is estimated to weigh 1,800 tons.

  "During the nineteenth century, California seemed like the promised land, a place where luck and gold ran in rivers. The news that humongous trees were growing in the Sierra Nevada mountains seemed like a myth, and the story was met with skepticism - assumed to be part of the hyperbole that surrounded the Gold Rush. The insistence that they were real, and enormous beyond anyone's experience, created a flurry of interest. Skeptics in the East demanded proof - tangible evidence. So, an enterprising soul decided to cut down the biggest Sequoia he could find. It happened to be a tree that Augustus T. Dowd first saw in 1852 in the Calaveras grove. Who is surprised that the first giant tree encountered by a European settler was destroyed in order to prove that it existed?" - Clifton Meador

• 

  Vertigo

  Amy Pirkle

  "I was diagnosed with vertigo last September after a particularly bad (3-day long) episode, so this book is about the things that make me feel better whenever I am having a bout of vertigo. The colors aren't represented as well through the photographs, but I've tried to pair up colors that vibrate against each other as the reader looks through the book, to kind of replicate the dizzy feeling one gets if she has vertigo.

  "I printed Vertigo at Penland School of Crafts during a week-long retreat for instructors in September 2011, shortly after having been diagnosed with vertigo. The imagery represents things that make me feel better when I am experiencing vertigo, including water, cool air, sleep, and turning off the lights." — Amy Pirkle

• 

  The Inner Workings of Accordions Explained

  Erika Spreiser

  In this art book, The Inner Workings of Accordions Explained, Erika Spreiser takes a whimsical approach to the explanation of how accordions work, noting that the sounds produced are because accordions are home to ghosts. The book is folded in accordion style — to mimic an actual accordion — with blue cloth-bound board covers. The inner pages are bordered in black and illustrated with ghosts and other figures, with text on the left-hand page of the two-page spread and the illustrations on the right. The opposite side of the accordion fold is red and illustrated with opaque, white ghost silhouettes. The book is signed and numbered edition 3 of 5 by Erika Spreiser.

• 

  Udflugter med tog

  Åse Eg Jørgensen

  This installment of Space Poetry’s Udflugter series follows the Jørgensen family on a train journey to Amsterdam. Their adventure is presented as a collection of seven fold-out panoramas consisting of multiple photographs pieced together. These photographs, rather than focusing on the sweeping vistas seen out the train’s window, capture the activity (or lack thereof) of the various train stations and interiors the family inhabits while getting from one place to another. The conjoined images in combination with the book’s uniquely folded and bound form create a hybrid between a vacation photo album and a home movie.

• 

  Africans in America

  Ben Blount

  Appearing like an ordinary hardcover novel, this book details the history of Africans in America, dedicating a page for each year since 1619. Only four pages contain any actual information on the history of Africans in America. Blount uses the absence of information to make readers reflect on what is not said about African-American history.

• 

  Wrongly Bodied: Documenting Transition from Female to Male

  Clarissa Sligh

  Wrongly Bodied relates the stories of Jake, a contemporary white male imprisoned in a woman’s body, as he transitions from female to male, and Ellen Craft, a 19th century black slave woman who escapes to Philadelphia from Georgia by passing as a white male slave owner. Working as staff support at a small woman’s college in Denton, Texas, and in the US Army reserves, Jake had been a female soldier in Operation Desert Storm in 1991. Sligh and Jake worked together over four years to document his journey. What results is a book of photographs and texts that take us inside what became a highly transformative journey for the photographed and the photographer. Includes essays by Carla Williams, Jake in Transition from Female to Male series, or, Through the Mirror and What Clarissa Found There and Silvia Roncucci, Women in Transition: From Female to Male (translated from Italian).

• 

  Sanctus Sonorensis

  Philip Zimmermann

  Sanctus Sonorensis is a 90-page board book by Philip Zimmermann with gilded edges, gold foil-text on the cover, and biblical-inspired phrases throughout. The cover image features a snapshot of the Sonoran desert in Southern Arizona about 50 miles from Lukeville, just a couple miles from the Mexican border. It is one of the most heavily trafficked and dangerous entry points for illegal Mexican immigrants entering the United States, and many die there each year from exposure and lack of water. The skyscapes throughout are all photographed in New Mexico and Arizona deserts during 2003 and 2004. The interior pages show a visual progression of sky from dawn to sunset, accompanied by a single line of text on a two-page spread. The work comments on Americans' complicated attitudes on illegal immigration from Mexico.

• 

  Stitches

  Alex Apella

  "My great-grandmother Berta, from Hungarian Transylvania, taught her four daughters to embroider; just as generations of mothers before her had learned from their mothers. As I grew up, the embroideries of my great-grandmother, along with those of my grandmother and great aunts punctuated our home, grounding those of us living in the United States in the traditions and expressions of our ancestors’ homes. Here in Argentina, where two of my great-aunts settled, and where Berta herself passed away, the homes of offspring also are enlivened with this link to our identical heritage. In the newer generations, across the continents, the ability to embroider, design, sew—the ability to express oneself—has expanded and evolved just as our grandmothers’ designs and embroideries expanded and evolved in their new homes. The stitches not only hold us to our heritage, they inspire us into our futures. All scans of original Hungarian embroideries and patterns used for the collages are from our family's personal collection, as are the family photographs." - Alex Appella

• 

  The Intrepid Ones

  Brian Borchardt

  From the text: "In the village of Juchitan, Mexico, gay men … are regarded as neither men nor women; they are know as muxe, and are considered a major element of society. They are a third gender, combining the best parts of both the male and female, equipped with special intellectual and artistic gifts."

  The Intrepid Ones provides a glimpse of Juchitan and its tripartite society. Set in a colorful array of handmade papers that have been collaged, perforated, and punctuated by unattributed photographic transfers, the production suggests that this is more than a local history.