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KUED’s VERVE features Rare Books in “Artists’ Books”

20 Friday Jul 2018

Posted by rarebooks in Video

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accordion, acrylic paint, Alicia Bailey, Alise Alousi, altered books, American Southwest, American West, Arches 90 lb., artists' books, Barry McCallion, Basingwerk, BFK, binding, birch, blankets, bookseller, Bradypress, bullet, Canson, Carolyn Hull, Carrier Pigeon, chapbook, Chinese, CMC, collage, collector, Connecticut, Daniel Kelm, deceit, desert, East Hampton, embossed paper, enamel, feathers, felt tip marker, Ferrum Wheel Press, galley proofs, gelatin, gesso, goatskin, gold tooling, Goudy, Goudy Bold, Granary Books, graph paper, Graphite, handmade paper, Harvard, hatchet, hoax, ink, inkjet, James Turrell, Japanese, Jen Bervin, Joelle Webber, John Van Dyke, KUED, l;oop, Lake City, laserfoil, laserprinted, leather, leporello, letterpress, maps, metal, Middletown, mixed media, Mohawk Via, Nebraska, New York, New York City, Omaha, Owen Wister, paper-mache, pens, photograph, pigment, pistol, poem, Portland, rare books, Ravenpress, Richard de Bas, Rick Moody, rifle, Robin Price, Roden Crater, Rutgers University, Saint Armand, Santa Monica, shovel, silk, stones, suede, sumi, Thomas Ingmire, Timothy C. Ely, trains, VERVE, voyeurism, Walt Whitman, watercolor, Wave Books Poetry Bus Tour, wax, white-out correction, Wide Awake Garage, wooden nickel

“Artists’ books are…a blown-up conference of multiple elements.”

KUED‘s online video series, VERVE, features artist’s books from the rare book collections in “Artists’ Books,” episode 5, season 6, “Its All About the Book.”

Here are some of the pieces chosen by the Rare Books staff for this episode:


ARKA
Timothy C. Ely
Portland, OR: T. Ely, 1995
N7433.4 E35 A7 1995

The book is drawn on BFK gray paper that was brush-sized with gelatin and CMC, then under painted with CMC and acrylic paint. Other materials include ink, Graphite, and watercolor. Each folio is sewn onto four raised cords that, on completion of the sewing, were laced into birch plywood boards. The end bands are silk worked over cores of leather. The spine of the book is goatskin. The board pastedowns are painted paper. The boards have a small amount of gold tooling suggestive of one part of the history and technology of the art of binding. Otherwise the cover boards are painted. The book is contained in a wooden box.



Hunting the Burn
Alicia Bailey
Lake City, CO: Ravenpress, 1998
N7433.4 B22 H86 1998

Two-sided leporello with self in-folded covers and removable spines. One side is Carolyn Hull’s poem “Hunting the Burn,” laserprinted on Basingwerk, overcoated with wax and pigment; the other side is a panoramic painting by Alicia Bailey, digitally reworked and printed with color inkjet on Arches 90 lb. cover and overcoated with wax. Four of the twelve panels have hand-cut rectangular openings with mixed media insertions. Covers are black Canson with hand applied enamel. Title piece is laserfoil on black paper. Spine pieces are black embossed paper laminated to black Canson. The box is paper-mache, gesso and pigmented wax. Box top has metal mesh and hemp-wrapped, wax-covered bullet attached. Inside box are stones and feathers. Edition of twenty copies, signed by Alicia Bailey and Carolyn Hull. Rare Books copy is no. 10.



Surplus Value Books: Catalog Number 13
Rick Moody
Santa Monica, CA: Danger! Books, 2002
N7433.4 M644 S6 2002

Deluxe edition presented as a collector’s box, containing two pens, one felt tip marker, one white-out correction pen, one pencil, one wooden nickel, one photograph with loop, seven photographs of “original artwork for placement only,” and other items. Text is composed in the form of galley proofs. Upon removing the galley holding the text, the reader is presented with a removable panel resembling a hospital release checklist. Holes cut into this panel reveal the objects contained below. The collectible objects in the box act as literal illustrations to the story. The narrator of the story is a bookseller, collector, mental patient. The story is told through the description of books for sale in the bookseller’s catalog. Values are assigned to each item in the catalog according to the bookseller’s inherent personal desire for each item. Themes of value, voyeurism, and deceit are presented as a pathology of collecting through the multiple layering of information and the revealing of objects of desire that are contained in the collector’s box. This work was first published in offset. Collector’s box constructed by Daniel Kelm at Wide Awake Garage. Rare Books copy is lettered “H.”



43, According to Robin Price with Annotated…
Robin Price
Middletown, CT: Robin Price, 2007
N7433.4 P753 A15 2007

From the colophon: “Paper maps from locations along the 43rd parallel are bound in an accordion that structurally supports the main text, which is printed on graph paper and also hinged together as an accordion (opening to 20 ft.)…The unusual double-layer accordion, housed in a printed cloth-covered clamshell box, is co-designed and co-produced by Daniel Kelm at Wide Awake Garage…” Edition of eighty-six plus twelve deluxe copies. Rare books copy is no. 23.



The Desert: Further Studies in Natural Appearances
Jen Bervin
New York City: Granary Books, 2008
N7433.4 B47 D47 2008

An altered book is a form of mixed media artwork that takes a book from its original form into a different form, altering its meaning. The artist may take an old or new book and cut, tear, glue, burn, fold, paint, add collage, create pop-ups, rubber-stamp, drill, bolt or be-ribbon the book to create a new work that is the expression of the artist. In this case, it is the text that is altered — by sewing over certain passages and leaving others exposed. The text from which Jen Bervin’s poem emerges is The Desert, written by John Van Dyke (1856-1932), a professor of Art History at Rutgers University. Van Dyke, the author of several books on art theory of the Art-For-Art’s-Sake school, claimed to have spent three years in the American Southwest desert with only his fox terrier for company and a pony for transportation. According to Van Dyke, he carried with him a rifle, a pistol, a hatchet, a shovel, blankets, tin pans and cups, dried food and a gallon of water. His romantic rhapsody of this trip, published in 1901, was a big hit, extremely influential and remains in print. In fact, Van Dyke saw most of the great desert over which he swooned looking out the windows of trains on his way from one first-class hotel to another. The Desert, version 1901, is the fact-faulted, fantastic hoax of a well-bred, well-educated Easterner, in much the same way that Harvard-educated New Englander Owen Wister’s novel The Virginian (1902) is a glorification of an American West culture that didn’t exist. Prose poem adaptation with overlay of zig zag stitches in pale blue thread. Composed and sewn at James Turrell’s Roden Crater on the Wave Books Poetry Bus Tour in October, 2006. Housed in a hinged archival case. Issued in a wrapper of white muslim cloth and white felt stitched together with blue thread.



Justice: What is Justice?
Thomas Ingmire
T. Ingmire, 2009
N7433.4 I48 J87 2008

Handmade paper mounted over board, Chinese Sumi ink, wide-edged pen (Automatic pen), Japanese brush.



Tangent
Alise Alousi
Omaha, NE: Bradypress, 2011
PS3551 L665 T36 2011



The Latest Things in Kites
Christopher Fritton
Ferrum Wheel Press, 2014
PS3606 R58 L37 2014

Artist’s statement: “A chapbook produced for Carrier Pigeon magazine as as tip-in, The Latest Things in Kites borrows language and its title from a chapter in the book, Fun for Boys. The chapbook is a single-sheet, four-page fold-over with rounded corners and a small embroidery thread tail. Handset in 14pt Goudy Bold and 10pt Goudy with antique copper cuts on Mohawk Via vellum. Hand letterpressed.” Edition of 1200 copies.



Whitman Crosshatch
Walt Whitman (1819-1892)
East Hampton, NY: 2015
PS3222 A7 2015

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DOC/UNDOC — Part 2/6, “A Mouth Full of Ink”

22 Tuesday Dec 2015

Posted by rarebooks in Uncategorized

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acotaciones, Ars Shamánica Performática, art, book, book art, bookmaking, books, Catholic, citizen, citizens, colmillo de coyote, colonial, colonized, commentary, country, culture, desert, Doc/Undoc, documentado, economy, Felicia Rice, Fluxus, Gesamtkunstwerk, Guillermo Gomez Peña, Hispanic/Latino, human rights, identities, identity, immigrants, ink, Isabel Dulfano, Jennifer González, laws, lucha libre, Luise Poulton, mask, media, monologues, Moving Parts Press, objects, obsidian, oils, Open Book, performance art, poem, poems, poetry, racist, rare books, reader, readers, reliquaries, Sam DeMonja, smells, sounds, Spanish, stereotypes, stethoscope, stones, sunglasses, symbol, tastes, undocumented, United States, videos, violence

During Fall Semester, 2015, University of Utah graduate students in SPAN6900-2 Analyzing Texts: Form and Content visited Rare Books. During the third and final session with Rare Books, the students were introduced to late 20th century/early 21st century fine press and artists’ books. The session ended with the premiere viewing of our copy of DOC/UNDOC Documentado/Undocumented Ars Shamánica Performática, purchased in September. Student response was so strong that managing curator Luise Poulton, in her typical over-enthusiastic way, exclaimed, “You should post your thoughts on Open Book!” Prof. Isabel Dulfano, in her own enthusiastic way, immediately took up the suggestion and made this a new assignment, right then and there. Bless the beleaguered grad students! Rare Books is pleased to present these responses.

From Sam DeMonja

Doc/Undoc photo courtesy of Moving Parts Press

Doc/Undoc photo courtesy of Moving Parts Press

This is a brief analysis of DOC/UNDOC Documentado/Undocumented Ars Shamánica Performática, published in 2014, by Moving Parts Press. Our class had the opportunity to explore a variety of printed works. Each book carried with it a unique style and background. Many of these books transcended the traditional concept of bookmaking to create works of art.

One such work of art our class viewed is DOC/UNDOC Documentado/Undocumented Ars Shamánica Performática produced by Guillermo Gomez Peña, Jennifer González and Felicia Rice. At first glance, this piece is nothing more than an indiscriminate collection of bric-a-brac thrust into a secondhand gun safe and pronounced “book art” by its creators and curators. This work takes a sizable step away from the paradigmatic, Eurocentric style of bookmaking. This book has obvious roots in both the Fluxus and Gesamtkunstwerk artistic styles wherein books are made to be interactive, exploratory, and incorporate a variety of media (Backstory). All books are interactive, but this piece engages the reader, or participant, through audio, tactile, visual, and olfactory components. Gomez Peña states the piece’s “interactive dimension may be its main contribution to the field of experimental book art, or rather ‘performative book art’” (DOC/UNDOC).

20151201_154828

The reader, to whom I will refer as one who interacts with this “book” from here on, may push buttons and turn knobs to hear commentary on the various items contained therein. Upon pushing these buttons, the reader hears Gomez Peña’s voice providing supplemental musings regarding each object in the box. The box contains mirrors surrounded by lights, in front of which the reader is encouraged by, Gomez Peña’s recorded utterances, to try on various wearable items such a stethoscope, sunglasses, and makeup.

The “book” is accompanied by videos of Gomez Peña’s provocative performance art. The reader sees Gomez Peña pretend to wield a loaded gun, cut his tongue and ears with scissors, place a hot iron on his chest, and make unintelligible sounds with a mouth full of ink which, according to Gomez Peña, sent him to the hospital. The piece also contains printed material with poetry arranged in a fresh format. The reader must scrupulously follow each word in each poem, as the preceding and succeeding words may be arranged in unusual, wave-like, patterns. There are a total of 15 printed monologues that are lyrical in nature and even contain acotaciones, or stage directions, to ensure each is read according to Gomez Peña’s penchant for performance art.

It is one thing to simply describe this piece, and it is quite another endeavor to try to explain what the piece means. The full title, DOC/UNDOC Documentado/Undocumented Ars Shamánica Performática, urges the reader to think about what it means to be documentado in Spanish and what is meant by the term “undocumented” in the U.S. The word “undocumented,” as it is used in the U.S., is politically charged and portrayed as inherently negative. The term is a symbol of racist stereotypes that robs immigrants of their true identity as members of the human family and is synonymous with powerlessness and a lack of human rights. In Gomez Peña’s poem, “What I chose not to do tonight,” the author states “when you cross the border it is as if your identity splits into two and one is permanently questioning the other” (What I chose not to do tonight). The text suggests that upon immigrating, one always possess two identities, an insider and an outsider, as both a documented citizen of one country and an undocumented citizen of another.

The author uses the terms colonial and colonized in his poems to explore this dichotomy of documented and undocumented identities. In one poem entitled “Flagrantly stupid acts of transgression,” the author describes giving an audience member a knife and asking her to cut his abdomen with it. The poem reads “’here… my colonized body,’ I said… and she went for it, inflicting on me my 45th scar, right her on my soul” (Flagrantly stupid acts of transgression). This speaks to the idea of being colonized by a dominant culture. The author insinuates that the U.S. harms immigrants through laws and economic dominance to maintain a distinction between the documented and undocumented.

This poem, and the entire piece, illustrates how undocumented persons are thought of as nameless, faceless, subjects of a colonial economy whose purpose is to suffer the misfortunes of supplying cheap labor to an empirical nation and not participate in it fully as citizens. Gomez Peña states that suffering, such as the suffering demonstrated in the poem, of migrants who “move from their proper place without documents is a direct consequence of a failed global project, but their suffering appears inconsequential. The fact that men, women, and children risk their lives by crossing the desert to escape violence and to make a few dollars to send back home remains insignificant” (On immigration 1). The interactive contents of this piece help to bring significance to the professedly insignificant acts of immigrants.

The objects in the case serve to give prominence to the seemingly unimportant objects that represent aspects of Hispanic/Latino life that contribute to the identity of the undocumented. There are hot sauce packets, Catholic trinkets of Virgins, a lucha libre mask, a colmillo de coyote, oils, obsidian stones, and countless other objects. Each object must carry some personal meaning to one or more person involved in the creation of the piece. These objects may have significance to a wide audience of Hispanic/Latino readers. This could serve to illustrate the fact that there are many parts of one’s life that go undocumented (Commentary). There are elements of identity and worth that are not recorded in the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services department.

The packaging of this piece is important also. It’s significant that so much content, such as videos, printed poems, artwork, reliquaries, sounds, tastes, and smells, are concealed within a relatively nondescript box. The box is metallic, cold, and has sharp corners and edges. The only writing on the exterior is: “Documentado Undocumented.” A parallel could be drawn between this and the lives of undocumented persons in the U.S. Labels are powerful in that they mask one’s true identity. Superficially, all that government, or law enforcement agencies, can perceive when they view the Hispanic/Latino population is whether or not they are legal citizens. In actuality, within the cold, metallic container projected on them by stereotypes and sociocultural norms, there is much more to be discovered. Within the box, awaits a world of exploration, emotion, worth, and identity regardless of the label on the box. Guillermo Gomez Peña, Jennifer González and Felicia Rice have successfully pulled off the creation of an intimate medium of expressing these important themes of citizenship, identity, colonization, and cultural disparity through this piece.

“Backstory.” DOCUNDOC. 6 July 2014. Web. 17 Dec. 2015 <http://docundoc.com/2014/07/02/what-i-chose/>.
“Doc/Undoc | Art | UC Santa Cruz.” Doc/Undoc | Art | UC Santa Cruz. Web. 17 Dec. 2015.
“What I chose not to do tonight.” DOCUNDOC. 2 July 2014. Web. 17 Dec. 2015. <http://docundoc.com/2014/07/02/what-i-chose/>.
“On immigration 1.” DOCUNDOC. 2 July 2014. Web. 17 Dec. 2015. http://docundoc.com/2004/02/22/on-immigration-1/>.
“Commentary.” DOCUNDOC. 2 July 2014. Web. 17 Dec. 2015.http://docundoc.com/2014/06/06/commentary/>.

Coming soon: Response from Peter Tanner

alluNeedSingleLine

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