New addition to Artists’ Books

COUNTING: A BOOK OF LISTS

Janine Wong/CenterStreet Studio, 2008

RISD Artists’ Books W646Co

Accordion fold book with cloth bound cover folder and slipcase.  Letterpress printed with wood and metal type over digital archival pigment print underlay. Pages mounted on Arches Cover paper, with pressure print images on verso.

What if someone were to look through your paper recycle bin, picking out discarded envelopes, notes, lists, letters, sketches, calendar pages, or other unwanted scraps you tossed out?  What kind of story would they be able to piece together about you? In our not-so-distant past, before the aid of “Blackberries” and other mobile devices that now help organize our daily lives, we kept lists and wrote notes to ourselves to remind us of the myriad details needing our attention.  Even now, we still sketch or scribble on scrap paper to capture our thoughts, plans or elusive dreams.  And when we uncover a forgotten hand written “to-do” list tucked in a coat pocket or in between the pages of a book, we are reminded of past concerns and events, tokens of a life lived.

Janine Wong’s artist book, “Counting: A Book of Lists”, captures these very details, highlighting the depth and fullness of her life as wife, mother, artist, educator, and administrator.  Each accordion page has a digital print of a “found list”.  Lists are numbered and categorized with a few additional details, printed letterpress on top of the digital print.  On the backs of these pages is a series of monochromatic pressure prints made from scraps of notebook paper, rolodex cards and empty envelopes; a kind of “debris field” in soft silhouette.

A sample entry on page 5, under the category “roles”, depicts a calendar page torn out of an organizer with lists of people to call, tax receipts to track, daycare to research, alumni dinner to plan, summer institute to organize, haircut, lectures to attend, and a new cover project to work on.  As we read each list, a portrait of the artist emerges.  We begin to recognize her handwriting, with its subtle variations that track the speed with which the list was made.  Where the handwriting is more uniform, we can imagine her meditating on this list, mulling over its contents.  Where the handwriting is scribbled, we can sense the immediacy of tracking a thought, possibly while sitting at a lecture, or just before running out the door.  The large blocky word lists written by childish hands bring to mind how quickly our children grow and how important these little scraps of their childhood become over time.

“Counting: A Book of Lists”, elegantly combines the best of techniques from both the handcrafted past and the electronic present, with its letterpress printing, hand bound covers, and digital images.  Turning the pages is a bit like coming across an archaeological find or a time capsule, not unlike Joan Lyons’ artist book, “Twenty-Five Years Ago” (Visual Studies Workshop Press, 1998  RISD Artists’ Books L97Tw) where the artist’s dusty old wallet is discovered in an air duct during renovations of her children’s former elementary school.  Appointment cards, shopping receipts and other ordinary snippets of her life indicate the changing roles of women and the tentative beginnings of the Visual Studies Workshop.  In this digital era, it is books like these that cause us to consider what will be left for people to discover about our lives, hundreds of years from now.  Will our digital photo albums, our text messages, or our emails survive?   How will our descendants remember us?  Will they be able to paint a portrait of us or piece together our lives from scraps of paper?  Will there be any electronic bytes left that are still readable?

Janine Wong has eloquently condensed these bits and pieces of her life without sentimentality and without turning the book into a kind of “family album”.  Because of the book’s simplicity and straightforward approach, it speaks to many of the concerns, issues, and responsibilities, both professional and personal, which women in this fast-paced world today face.           LWC

A Northern Christmas

Amidst a dizzying whirl of Christmas activity (which I wish was filled with glittering parties, but in actuality consists of more trips to Kohl’s than any human in their right mind should make), this little gem of a book offers a moment of peace and quiet contemplation.

Rockwell Kent and his eight year old son spent the winter of nineteen-eighteen and nineteen in a one room log cabin on Fox Island, off the south coast of Alaska. Excerpted from WILDERNESS: A Journal of Quiet Adventure in Alaska, this ‘gift book’, titled A Northern Christmas, is number one in a series published in 1941 by the American Artists Group. It includes Kent’s journal entries written over the Christmas holiday, with woodcut illustrations of the Alaskan wilderness.

“Thursday, December nineteenth
This day is never to be forgotten, so beautiful, so calm, so still with the earth and every branch and tree muffled in deep, feathery new-fallen snow. And all day the softest clouds have drifted lazily over the heaven … It was a day to Live, —and work could be forgotten. So Rockwell and I explored the woods, at first reverently treading on path, so that the snow about us might still lie undisturbed. But soon the cub in the boy broke out and he rolled in the deepest thickets, shook the trees down upon himself, lay still in the snow for me to cover him completely, washed his face till it was crimson, and wound up with a naked snow bath.”

Rockwell Kent, with the young Rockwell and their only companion on the otherwise isolated island, a Swedish gold-miner and trapper named Olson, manage to create a magnificent feast and magical atmosphere with the very simplest of supplies and materials.

“Everything goes beautifully; the wood burns as it should, the oven heats, the kettle boils, the beans stew, and the bread browns in the oven just right, and the new pudding sauce foams up as rich and delicious as though instead of the first it were the hundredth time I’d made it. “                                 ACB

The RISD Library will be closed between December 24 – January 3rd. Happy Holidays!

Tom Phillips at Brown University, October 5, 2009

For those of you who were fortunate to be able to attend the TOM PHILLIPS lecture at Brown the other night, you may be interested to know that we have four editions of his artist book A HUMUMENT in Special Collections.  The first edition was published in 1980, the “first revised edition” in 1987, the third edition in 1997, and the fourth edition in 2005.

This British artist, known not only for his artist books but also for his paintings, portraits, posters, illustrated books, sculpture, poetry and music, gave a wonderful presentation of his work and how it developed.  As a child, growing up in London during World War II, he and his brother used to push a handcart through the streets looking for salvage material.  A copy of Dante’s INFERNO, illustrated by Gustave Doré, found its way into their hands and made a great impression on his young mind.  Another significant source of inspiration came in the form of care packages, sent to his family by relatives in the US.  Precious parcels of food were lined with old comics, cast-offs from American cousins.  One comic in particular stood out, the cover of a September 1939 issue of DETECTIVE COMICS with a powerful image of Batman looming behind a castle, shrouded in mist.  This was the first image he copied as a young boy and you can see in his adult work, traces of it being repeated in many forms, including his contemporary illustrated version of Dante’s INFERNO.

Phillips’ first edition of A HUMUMENT, started with an old Victorian novel he found in a book shop in the 1960’s called A HUMAN DOCUMENT, by W. H. Mallock.  He took this book and altered it by working directly onto the pages, transforming the text by a process of “elimination”, inspired by the methods of Mallarmé.  On each page, major parts of the story are covered over with paintings, drawings, and collaged elements.  The remaining words form poetic phrases, many terse and pithy, humorous and provocative.  Since this first edition, he has used 15 other British copies of A HUMAN DOCUMENT, to create three more published editions and numerous other single works.  Each new edition has approximately 50 new pages, totally different from the previous editions.  He continues to scour the text for new subjects/words that evoke an emotional response and can be transformed into a new poetic composition.  He makes poems from words and pictures from poems.  He speaks of his rules for this process as the “dogged silliness” of the artist because often those “rules” are creatively broken.

Some of the original collaged pages are part of the RUTH AND MARVIN SACKNER ARCHIVE OF CONCRETE AND VISUAL POETRY in Miami, FL.  When I visited their home which houses this collection in the 1990’s, the entire wall just inside the vestibule was covered with these remarkable pages.

Other tidbits of interest from Tom’s lecture:

Every year he makes a drawing of a periwinkle each day for about a week, while the periwinkle is in bloom.

The American editions of A HUMAN DOCUMENT are not usable for his collages because many quaint English phrases are omitted for US readers who “might not understand” them.

He is now starting to collage pages from old American comics into A HUMUMENT.

The original DETECTIVE COMICS sold for 10 cents back in the 1930’s.  A copy of his favorite issue from September 1939 now sells for $44,000.00.  His brother sold their copy in the 1940’s for 6 pence.

Some of his figures for Dante’s INFERNO have also come from the work of William Blake.

Mottos to live by, found on the walls of his studio:

“No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better.”  Samuel Beckett

“I can’t go on.  I’ll go on.”  Samuel Beckett

Music has always played a big role in his work, and he was much influenced by John Cage, Morton Feldman, Brian Eno, and Terry Riley.  Tom created an opera called “Irma” and is currently working with a composer Tarik O’Regan on an opera called “Voices”.  In Phillips’ work, often the words are arranged like a score.  One page of A HUMUMENT reads, “The sound in my life enlarges my prison.”

Musician Morton Feldman once distinguished between a “notion” and an “idea”.  A notion is superficial and temporary.  An idea is something that grows and lasts a lifetime.

His advice to students: “Be where you are.  Muster all the forces you’ve got.”              LWC

New to the collection: The Works of William Hogarth

The Works of William Hogarth Esq. RA, with the additions of many subjects not before collected, to which is prefixed, a biographical essay on the Genius and production of Hogarth, and explanations of the subjects of the plates, by John Nichols Esq. FSA.  London: Baldwin, Cradock, and Joy, 1822           Large Folio NE 642 .H6 N5 1822

William Hogarth, 1697-1764

A recent donation to Special Collections is an early 19^th century publication of the engraved works of William Hogarth.  This large folio has over 150 engravings, printed between 1828 – 1837, over 50 years after Hogarth’s death, from the original refurbished plates, and includes descriptive texts and explanations.  It features a large self portrait, many caricatures and political, satirical works, as well as his moral stories, narrated in a series of pictures.

Hogarth, a British painter and engraver, worked at a time when British culture was establishing itself as separate from Continental courts or religious influences.  It was a time of prosperity and growth with liberal political leanings and rather unburdened moral sensibilities.  The influence of politics, social issues, and contemporary drama and novels, can be seen throughout these works.

Hogarth first considered himself a painter and many of his early works were commissioned by wealthy families.  At the same time, he was also interested in genre painting, focusing on “modern moral subjects” and scenes of the lower class.  Although he believed that painting was “high art” and engraving a more mechanical form of labor, he achieved fame primarily for his engraved works.  Among those well known works are “A Harlot’s Progress” (1732), “A Rake’s Progress” (1735), “Marriage à la Mode” (1745), “Beer Street” and “Gin Lane” (1751).  Included in this book are three “suppressed prints” entitled “Before”, “After”, and “Feeding Poultry”, possibly suppressed because of their racy content.

Hogarth was involved in current political issues and along with 4 other artists, petitioned Parliament to protect the rights of engravers, whose work was being pirated and sold by merchants.  The resulting Engraver’s Copyright Act of 1735 gave artists the sole rights to their prints for 14 years from their initial date of publication.  Hogarth also founded a drawing academy in St. Martin’s Lane and in 1753 wrote Analysis of Beauty, a much criticized manifesto on art theory.  The library owns a 1772 copy of this work as well, which was printed posthumously and sold by Hogarth’s widow.

The prints in The Works of William Hogarth are quite beautiful and when you look at them with magnification, you can see that parts of the print were etched and parts were engraved, a practice common in that time period.  The paper is made from rags and is still strong and flexible.  The binding has been re-backed, although it looks like the original boards, which have been covered with quarter bound leather and marbled paper, are still intact.  The book is very large and heavy so it is both a delight and a challenge to view.

bathos

The prints are complex and intricate, with many subtle visual clues to the narrative.  Hogarth’s satirical and robust depictions of every day life in the early 18th century seem to echo simliar political and social issues we face even now.  Might we not benefit these days from the vision  and social commentary of a contemporary Hogarth?        LWC

Who’s got the button?

Welcome to all new and returning students!

If you weren’t able to make it to Sunday’s Freshman Orientation tour of the Library, you missed a chance to pick up one of these cool buttons.

Each button features an image from a selection of books found in  our Special Collections.  Whether it’s a ceremonial Pueblo costume, an early woodcut print, a 1908 map of Providence, a Pompeiian mural, a Picasso painting, a 20th Century visual poem, an Art Deco textile design, 1920’s fashion pattern, Blake watercolor, Japanese print,  Medieval hat, or other curious images, we have one for you.

Each button comes with a card that gives the title and call number of the book in which the image is found.  So if you want to see more images like these, bring the card with you next time you come visit the Library, and we’ll pull the book for you to look at.  And whether you are a Freshman or not, if you don’t have one of these great fashion statements, come in and get one while they last.

We are located in room 223 of the Fleet Library at 15 Westminster Street, on the second floor.  Our hours are Monday through Friday, 8:30 am to 4:30 pm.  And while you’re here, check out the other cool stuff in the Library.  More information is found at our new library website too.   LWC

Representing the Wild: 19th & 20th Century Illustrations of Birds & Animals

Our current exhibition, now on display in the library til September 26th, features a collection of early illustrated ornithology and natural history books, on extended loan from the Audubon Society of Rhode Island.  Among these are American Ornithology by Alexander Wilson, 1808; American Ornithology by Charles Lucian Bonaparte, 1825-33; The Birds of North America by John James Audubon, 1840-44; Viviparous Quadrupeds of North America by John James Audubon, 1845-48; and the Game Birds and Shooting Sketches by John Guille Millais, 1892.  These books document newly discovered North American species of birds and animals and were important resources for Europeans, hungry to learn more of America’s untamed wilderness.  Hand-colored engravings and unique written descriptions reflect the scholarship and artistic talents of these significant 19th century American naturalists.  If you wish to take a closer look at additional volumes of these sets which are not currently in the display cases, stop by Special Collections on the second floor, Room 223, Monday through Friday, 8:30am – 4:30pm.

The exhibit also features drawings of birds and plants by former RISD students in Edna Lawrence’s Nature Drawing classes from the 1930’s to the 1960’s and taxidermy specimens from RISD’s Edna Lawrence Nature Lab.        LWC

A Recent Artist Book Conference

THE HYBRID BOOK: intersection + intermedia was a three day conference and book fair organized and hosted by the Book Arts/Printmaking MFA Program at The University of the Arts in Philadelphia, June 4-6.  The Conference focused on the multi-disciplinary aspect of artists’ books as a kind of  “hybrid” art form involving old and new technologies, collaborative processes, performance and interactive digital media.

Conference topics included: Book Arts in Academia; The Future of Letterpress; Modes of Production: Collaborative Processes; Offset Applications: Then and Now; Intersection + Intermedia; Text and the Hybrid Book; Book Art in the Social Sphere; and The Reciprocity of Books and Digital Media.

Highlights of the conference included interviews with internationally known artists Hedi Kyle and Gunnar Kaldewey and a live performance of  “God Bless This Circuitry”, a collaborative book work created by author Tate Shaw and musician Andrew Sallee.

Over 70 book artists exhibited their work at the Hybrid Book Fair.  In addition two gallery exhibitions were held, one featuring the book art of three artists Hedi Kyle, Gunnar A. Kaldewey, and Irma Boom and another the artists’ books of alumni from the Book Art/Printmaking MFA Program at The University of the Arts.  Exhibition catalogs for these will be available soon in the library.

The event was well attended by book artists, scholars, educators, students, librarians, and book dealers from the U.S. and beyond.  For more information about the conference, go to the official Hybrid Book website.  For an overview of the conference and detailed reviews of several outstanding artists’ books exhibited there, check out Elisabeth Long’s book arts blog, The Sign of the Owl.  Also take a look at a couple of interactive digital “books” at these sites: My Turning Point , Confess, and War.        LWC

Artists’ Books and Bookbinding Techniques

Did you know that the library has many useful resources about Artists’ Books and bookbinding techniques?  Most of these books in our main collection are browsable and circulate.  If you are interested in books that give information about the subject of artists’ books, specific book presses and artists, historical and contemporary exhibitions, and collections look in the RISD MAIN and RISD OVERSIZE call number ranges for N 7433’s.   For books that give specific details on bookbinding techniques, look in the Z 271’s.   We also have non-circulating copies of several of these books in the Reference area.  Look in RISD REF  N 7433’s and  Z 271’s.

If you would like to have a SUBJECT GUIDE to resources in the Fleet Library on ARTISTS’ BOOKS & BOOKBINDING TECHNIQUES, email us (see contact information in ABOUT) and we will send you the guide as a PDF attachment or, you may find this list in LIBGUIDES on the library’s new website.      LWC

Exhibition in the library

There’s still time to see Friends of Nancy: comics at the RISD Library, our current exhibition now up through July 2nd.  The exhibit is on two floors of the library, in the Reading Room exhibition area by the entrance as well as the balcony cases on the 1st floor and in the Special Collections exhibit case in the 2nd floor hallway.

Featured in this exhibition are historic and contemporary comic works and graphic novels from the library’s collections, plus original works from local artists: Allison Cole, Cybele Collins, Jo Dery, C.F., Leif Goldberg, Carlos Gonzalez, and James McShane.  Also featured are selections from the generous donations to our comics collections by RISD alumnus Tim Finn FAV ‘00 and by comic artist Lew Sayre Schwartz.     LWC