BOOK ART
Artist’s Book
An ‘Artist’s Book’ is a hand-made book or ‘book-like’ structure that houses a sequence of words or images, or some combination of both. The very stability of this traditional form invites a challenge to reinterpret it for purely artistic and conceptual effects.
It is a compelling medium that suggests an open forum for new ideas and collaborative ways of thinking. Some of the books shown here are unique and some are editioned.
Wood Notes Wild
1996, Folios 18”x24”, 40 pages, calligraphy over painted surfaces of wheat paste and acrylic, glass, board and cloth cover
Wood Notes Wild is a hand lettered, painted and bound one-of-a kind manuscript. The work celebrates the tension between nature’s unruly cacophony of bird song and a 19th century bird lover’s ecstatic commitment to lash that sound to a system of notes and measures. The manuscript is based on an 1892 published edition of Wood Notes Wild: Notations of Bird Music by Simeon Pease Cheney. After a distinguished career as a singing teacher in rural Vermont and a composer of popular music, Cheney devoted himself in his final years to listening to birdsong and transcribing it into musical notation. These musical passages were accompanied by his observations on the birds and their music.
Purchased by the Rochester Institute of Technology, for inclusion in the Melbert B. Cary Collection, showcasing the Graphic Arts (fine printing, calligraphy, bookbinding and illustration). Exhibited at the Corcoran Gallery DC, National Museum of Women in the Arts DC, Pyramid Atlantic MD (“Curator’s Choice” award), McGuffey Art Center VA
King of Hearts
2004, clamshell box, cloth, board
Figure in box with glass window openings revealing images of hearts tied in wrappings and knots
Chance and the Shuffle of Things
2004, board, cloth, glass, plastic
Private collection Bucknell University, PA.
Monster in the Path
Interior. Linen pages, needle point, bleach, book cloth. Part of Mapping the Dark: A Museum of Ambient Disorders. Private collection of the artist.
See Mapping the Dark to learn more.
The 53rd Street Subway Tablets
Part of Mapping the Dark: A Museum of Ambient Disorders. Private collection of the artist.
See Mapping the Dark to learn more.
Men in Suits: A Day on the Hill
18” x 12”, Cloth, brass, board, ink jet printing.
See Photomontage to learn more.
Mapping the Dark:
A Museum of Ambient Disorders
Limited edition Leather-Bound Clamshell Box with ten bound books. Purchased by the National Gallery of
Art in 2004
See Mapping the Dark to learn more.
Bob’s Flashback
Third in a series of four boxes. Part of Mapping the Dark: A Museum of Ambient Disorders. Private collection of the artist.
See Mapping the Dark to learn more.
The 53rd Street Subway Tablets
Part of Mapping the Dark: A Museum of Ambient Disorders. Private collection of the artist.
See Mapping the Dark to learn more.
The Blue Cage
1998, poem by George Bradley, Piano hinge with glass tubing, glass pages sandwiched in cloth covered board, photography by RC. Private collection San Diego, CA
Monster in the Path
2000, Box (20”x15”) and Inside cover: rubber, cloth, board, brass. Part of Mapping the Dark: A Museum of Ambient Disorders. Private collection of the artist.
See Mapping the Dark to learn more.
