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Catalogue
31
Five New Books From A New Location!
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1. Cawley, Crystal. Gilman, Charlotte
Perkins Stetson. The Yellow Wall-paper. Portland,
Maine: Crystal Cawley / Wolfe Editions, 2004. $450
Artist’s book edition of American
feminist classic, one of 30 copies on Arches Text Laid, each
signed and numbered by the artist / printer, Crystal Cawley
who has created three collagraph prints for her book. Page
size: 7 inches x 11 inches; 20pp; + title page and colophon,
paste paper frontispiece, and 3 collagraph prints (collagraph
is a print made from a collaged plate) as well as collagraph
relief print endpapers in yellow. Bound by Crystal Cawley: tan
cloth over boards; yellow dust jacket created on tracing paper
with frottage (rubbing) and acrylic paint, laminated with
acrylic medium, with white label title printed letterpress in
black, new. The text was set in Monotype Janson by David C.
Wolfe at Wolfe Editions. Crystal Cawley printed the text as
well as editioning her images, also at Wolfe Editions. The
project was funded in part by a grant from the Maine Arts
Commission. The frontispiece pastepaper and 3 collagraphs are
in yellow, the first two on acrylic-stained paper and the
third on tracing paper collaged with acrylic medium,
representing the narrator’s descent in madness. This is a
handsome edition of Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s feminist
classic - first fictional treatment of post-partum depression.
(9533)
2. Flying Fish Press. Chen, Julie. True
to Life. Berkeley, CA: Flying Fish Press, 2005. $1,600
First
Edition, limited to 100 copies, each signed and numbered by
the author / artist, Julie Chen. The book is printed
letterpress using a combination of pressure plates,
woodblocks, and photopolymer plates. It was assembled and
bound at Flying Fish Press with assistance from Macy Chadwick.
The book is a tablet that sits on its own easel, housed within
the box holding the book. The tablet, covered in bordeaux
silk, fastened with brass in each corner, has an opening 10-½
inches x 6-7/8
inches covered with plexi, through which is viewed the text.
Along each vertical side of the box are wooden
"arrows" each numbered in turquoise on an orange
ground, reading 2-12, each representing a page. The box
measures 14-7/8
inches x 8-¼ inches. To view the pages, the reader must push
up both the "arrows" marked "2" or
"3" etc. The colophon is printed on the inside of
the tray case holding the book, with the easel on the back.
The box folds out on each side, to reveal images printed in
green and yellow in a very organic abstract design. the name
of the press is on the left fold-down, printed in back on a
strip of tobacco-colored Japanese paper. On the right
fold-down is text relating to the book in the form of six
strips printed on the same tobacco-colored Japanese paper in
black. The text reads
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Page 1: In times of transition /
there is an irresistible urge to look back / touch the
wound again and again
Page 2: Try to pinpoint the precise
moment of error / Admit to yourself that you knew you
were making a mistake before you even began / Relive
the pain of knowing you were wrong
Page 3: Turn events into a story
that you can tell yourself and others / change the
words ever so slightly with each telling / play up the
drama / give the dialogue more dignity than it had at
the time / omit shameful scenes of humiliation
Page 4: Leave out certain painful
exchanges that play over and over in your mind / tell
yourself that you are preserving the truth / even as
you reinvent the details one by one / allow the story
to replace your actual memories
and so on. |
Each page alternates from an orange ground
to a celadon ground. Each page is illustrated with abstract
images, very organic in nature, as well as a partial view of a
long, continuous visual timeline. The covers - right and left
- fold open and there is an onlay image, 6-7/8 inches x 1-7/8
inches in shades of green on board with title and author
printed in black on tobacco colored paper the same width of
the image. The left cover has a cutout that fits over the
onlay image on the right cover, acting as a fastener for the
book.
Once again, Julie Chen has pushed the
boundaries on the definition of a book and created a
provocative meditation on time and space and how life
interacts therein. (9536)
Unique Binding by Donald Glaister
3. Glaister, Donald. Carr, Dan. Gifts of
the Leaves with Prints from the Ova Series by Julia
Ferrari. Ashuelot: Trois Fontaines [Golgonooza Letter
Foundry], 1997. $9,000
One of 26 lettered "de tete"
copies from a total issue of 100, all on Arches paper, each
signed and numbered or lettered by the author and type
designer, punch cutter and printer, Dan Carr, and the artist,
Julia Ferrari. As an example of contemporary book arts, this
may well be unique, I can think of no other book of
contemporary verse where the author / printer has designed and
cut a unique type face for his book. This lettered copy has,
in addition to the four original etchings contained in the
regular edition, a unique colored monotype on Richard de Bas
paper, a copper strike from the hand cut punches bound into
the custom-made clamshell box housing the book. In addition,
this copy is in a unique binding by Donald Glaister. Page
size: 12-½ inches x 9-¼ inches; 78pp. Bound: sculptural
binding in full gray morocco with title and author and artist
in gold gilt on smooth spine which is recessed to hold images
of trees - trunks and leaves made of onlays of wood veneers
painted to be tree trunks, leaves made of cork onlays in
green, red and bare branches under several layers of
transparent mylar, representing ice, with ghost images of
leaves in a slightly paler gray painted on the morocco, all
against a ground of gold gilt dots. The night sky was never
more beautiful. The "ice" pushes in from the edges,
as it does in nature to the unfrozen center. Paste paper
guards of green wood-grained paper, all edges gilt, including
untrimmed fore edge and bottom edge, top edge trimmed and gilt
in abstract design in palladium and gold, housed in black
cloth clamshell box with copper strike from the hand cut
punches (letter Y) inlaid into inside front panel of box,
paper label on side of box with name of author and artist,
title of book, publisher and date against ground of painted
leaves, signed by Donald Glaister and dated in blind stamping
with gold gilt dot on back turn-in at inside edge, new.
Dan Carr has created a type face called
Regulus after the star rising through the trees when the first
alphabet was completed for his verse. In the Preface he states
he views "the poems are collected as an alphabet."
The collections of verse, he goes on, are about
"transformation found in the seasons of a year...my poems
revealed a kind of stations of the soul, the cycle of the
seasons of frost and sun." Julia Ferrari’s etchings in
somber shades of gray redolent with organic imagery complement
the text as does her monotype in blue, red and green. Perhaps
they are fiddlehead ferns emerging from the earth, or simply
harmonious colors in fluid shapes. It is, in any case, a
lovely image. The theme of transformation that occurs in
nature and that constancy of change are perfectly interpreted
by Donald Glaister in his remarkable binding - three
dimensional as in a sculpture and yet a painting, using
leather and paint and unusual materials to make a collage of
surprising beauty and subtly. Looking at it, the viewer is
filled with admiration for the beauty of nature as well as for
the artist who communicates this. (8364)
3A. [Golgonooza Letter Foundry] Carr, Dan. Gifts
of the Leaves with Prints from the Ova Series by Julia
Ferrari. Ashuelot: Trois Fontaines [Golgonooza Letter
Foundry], 1997.
Deluxe Edition: $2,150
As above but in the publisher’s hand-sewn
pastepaper over covered boards binding designed by Julia
Ferrari, housed in a black clamshell box with pastepaper label
on spine and small copper plate with strike from one of the
Regulus cap punches set into box cover.
3B. [Golgonooza Letter Foundry] Carr, Dan.
Gifts of the Leaves with Prints from the Ova Series by
Julia Ferrari. Ashuelot: Trois Fontaines [Golgonooza Letter
Foundry], 1997. Regular Edition: $750
As above, but one of 74 numbered copies
with one etching and three duotones in handsewn binding as 3B.
4. Jackman, Sandra. "Target"
[New York: 2004]. $2,500
Unique Artist’s Book, signed by the
artist, Sandra Jackman, on the last page, on the binding, and
on the fabric sleeve. Page size: 9-½ inches by 6-½ inches;
29 pages hand drawn and lettered in pen and ink with many
pages collaged with black and white images. Bound: paper over
boards with both front and back hand painted and collaged in
black and white, with black border at edges, by the artist.
Housed in a cloth sleeve that is painted with Hebrew letters
and black stripes with burn holes scattered randomly and a
ragged, ripped fold-over top; the sleeve fits in a painted
black box (as if burned) decorated with bits of broken glass,
and roughly torn and ripped petit point tapestry, new. TARGET
retells the Holocaust, with each page partitioned in comic
book format, the anomaly dramatizing the horror. The human
beings caught up in the black maelstrom are always small in
size compared to the swirling blackness around them. The use
of scale and blackness is the artist’s way of depicting
actions that are too horrifying to actually depict. There are
images of railway wheels, motorcycles, guns, skeletons. The
text starts, "They were told to bring gold and jewelry
with them. They were told to bring warm clothes. They brought
suitcases with them..." "They were rounded up in
cities, towns, villages...They were taken from all over
Europe. There was no escape." Sentences are started with
words and ended with a picture, i.e. "They dug their own
..." As the narrative moves forward, the word
"genocide" is introduced with surrounding phrases,
"How could...Nobody would do...Unbeli...Can’t be...Tic
Toc." Actual photographs that have been painted - but
that are still abstract - are used in some collages; as are
cardboard cut-outs. By the time the text reaches the words,
"Save us...The cry for help...Help was not
coming..." the full horror of the Holocaust is evident.
The death camps are named, each in its own frame, the words
surrounded by black pen work reminding one of the ever-present
barbed wire. Text fragments describing the aftermath of the
discovery of the death camps appear on the last few pages,
"How much like skeleton...Teeth, fingernails, bones had
been bulldozed, SHOCKING, never again." The last page of
text is a quote from Primo Levi, "The injury cannot be
healed; it extends through time, and the furies, in whose
existence we are forced to believe...perpetuat[e] the
tormentor’s work by denying peace to the tormented."
The artist’s statement tells us that, "The book and its
presentation are created to convey the horrors inflicted by a
mentality that breeds contempt for human life. The action
takes place without preamble. The reader is engulfed in the
events that resonate into the 21st Century." Jackman’s
meditation on man’s inhumanity to fellow man is compelling
viewing / reading.
Contemporary artist, Sandra Jackman, has
had several one-person exhibitions, as well as participating
in selected group shows, including the National Museum of
Women in the Arts, the Brooklyn Public Library, Hillwood Art
Museum, and the Boston Museum of Fine Arts School Library. Her
work is held by many private collectors as well as
institutional collectors, including the Skirball Museum,
Watkinson Library at Trinity College, the Hunt Library at the
Boston Museum of Fine Art, the University of Pittsburgh and
the National Museum of Women in the Arts. (9542)
Pop Up Book
5. Red Angel Press. Crane, Hart. Three
Poems from The Bridge. [Bremen, ME: Red Angel Press],
2004. $750
Limited Edition, signed by the artist and
designer, Ron Keller, one of 100 copies, the poetry on
Saunders Waterford paper and the title page and illustrations
on Sekishu. Page size: 12-½ inches x 7-½ inches, oblong
octavo. Bound: beige linen cloth with painted silver lines
resembling cables of Brooklyn Bridge. Text hand set and
printed letterpress in American Garamond 648 for the poetry,
Garamont Italic for the text and Caslon 471 for the title. The
text is printed in black and the title page and colophon in a
gray green. Keller has chosen to reprint three poems that
strongly use the imagery of the Brooklyn Bridge. The book is
presented in a horizontal format reflective of the span of the
bridge. The first two poems, "Cutty Sark" and
"Atlantis" are illustrated with three relief print
images of the bridge’s interesting stone arches and steel
suspension cables. These images are each printed in six colors
in a style reminiscent of early 20th century poster graphics.
The third poem, "To Brooklyn Bridge" is printed on
four hinged leaves that extend to 42 inches when opened. This
poems typographic layout forms the bridge’s roadway and is
bordered by a depiction of the suspension cables - the poet’s
"choiring strings!" - that rise up from the pages
when opened. An elaborate and imaginative design from Red
Angel Press honoring one of New York’s most recognizable
landmarks. (9540)
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Priscilla Juvelis, Inc.
11 Goose Fair
Kennebunkport, ME 04046
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