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).
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Slices
Emily Martin
A letterpress printed carousel book constructed of Moriki paper and Thai striped paper. The text is positioned on top of each of the 12 slices; each segment of text contains 50 words. This book was produced in conjunction with the artist’s 50th birthday. Hard cover wrapped in Thai striped paper with an imbedded magnetic strip to hold the cake in its full circle.
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A Diction
Heather Weston
"The book utilizes the page shape of a pint glass, and by doing this, the angled unfolding of the book’s monologue creates a full circle when open that carries the visual and structural metaphor of the cycle of addiction. The paper on which the monologue is printed is Gmund Bier paper which is made of recycled beer labels, pulp and beer fibres (hops, malt and yeast). Production: Offset lithography on paper; book cloth on millboard. A Diction looks at the way we choose to deny our own realities through alcoholism, an addiction that perpetually allows us to disavow our difficulties with the world as we find it. The book reflects the never-ending cycle that is characteristic of any addiction, as the addict continually attempts to grapple with a reality which is uncomfortable and intolerable. What is favoured by the addict is a short-term solution to long-term psychological discomfort at the expense of living in reality and working though the reality’s unpleasant aspects. The result is a repetitive reliance on a diction that controls and restricts what we perceive and feel as real." - Vamp & Tramp, Booksellers, LLC
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Borges & I
Heather Weston
Once again, Heather Weston successfully navigates subtle psychological territory. This self-reflexive story explores the tension between Borges the writer and Borges the man. Weston magnifies that tension by drawing forth subtext from text, dramatizing the split between id and ego, deeper self and public persona. At the same time, the book functions as a metaphor for Borges' experience of going blind in middle age, a subject not directly alluded to in the story. But Weston interprets Borges' refusal to stop reading and writing as a possible cause of his blindness. Thus, both refusal and blindness are themselves symbolic of the split. Black text is printed offset on black paper, and Weston literally brings the subtext forward from Borges sentences by using blind embossing (raised letters). This gives a physical dimension to the page—with an obvious reference to Braille script—that interrupts and hijacks the prose of Borges the writer. The revealed subtext is a bitter and futile monologue, hewn from within the body of the original text. Insightful.
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Voyage(r): A Tourist Map to Japan
Clarissa T. Sligh
"In this diary-like artist's book, Sligh recounts a trip to Japan through a thoughtfully constructed montage of photography, texts, and abstract gestural paintings. In personal and poetic musings, the author ponders her relationship to Japanese culture, both as a firsttime visitor and as an African American woman." - Prospectus
"This work comes out of a visit with people and places in Japan. It is also based on research of the historical circumstances surrounding the United States’ decision to drop the Atomic Bomb on Japan and reflections on what visiting Hiroshima meant to me as an American." - Clarissa Sligh
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Conundrum
Ann Lovett
"Conundrum uses photographs, historical medical diagrams, and text to address the ways in which the body is framed by history, science, experience, and desire. Exploring the historic scientific text as a site which functions symbolically as the repository of intellectual knowledge, and the skin as sensor and instrument of desire, it questions the persistent paradigm of Cartesian mind/body division. Contrasting and intertwining representations of ‘objective’ scientific inquiry with those of physical experience, memory, and desire, the book raises questions about the nature of knowledge, what is and can be known about human experience, and how that knowledge has been framed historically.
"Historical anatomy diagrams allude to the conceptual framework of the time in which they were made and the fluidity and instability of scientific knowledge. To look at these diagrams is to examine scientific, political, and social belief; images of the classified, organized corpus become metaphors for the belief that rational analysis can explain and control the individual self. By shifting them from the role of medical history into the context of art, from the classificatory and didactic to the realm of interpretive representation, I intend that readers will consider what kind of information is found here. These diagrams might be seen not only as a tool by which scientists in the past learned about the structure of the body, but also as a symbolic visual representation of a specific paradigm which continues to frame our view of physical experience.
"Color images emphasize skin as the container of the body and the self, as the barrier which separates self from other, and as a cognitive tool for transmitting the sense of touch and perceiving the world. Within these multiple roles of containment and protection, exposure and disguise, pain and pleasure, the skin is in a state of constant renewal, recording aging, injury, and healing, the text of experience. These images give voice to the sensual and evocative body, the experience of vibrant, fluid physicality.
"The cover text is a mirror image of Descartes’ treatise on the mind and the body." — Ann Lovett
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Bent Like the River
Terry Schupbach-Gordon
A short, lyrical poem is brought to life by a series of powerful woodcuts. The contents celebrates and affirms the lives of people living with disabilities. The rhythmic quality of the verse is echoed by the syncopated marks of the gouge and the movement of the bodies and waterways depicted over the pages.
