{"id":1059,"date":"2012-12-06T21:42:04","date_gmt":"2012-12-06T21:42:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/commons.trincoll.edu\/watkinson\/?p=1059"},"modified":"2012-12-06T21:42:04","modified_gmt":"2012-12-06T21:42:04","slug":"artful-bookish-things","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/commons.trincoll.edu\/watkinson\/2012\/12\/06\/artful-bookish-things\/","title":{"rendered":"Artful bookish things"},"content":{"rendered":"

[Posted by Sally Dickinson, Associate Curator]<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>The Watkinson purchased several intriguing pieces from two British book artists this year.\u00a0 Rick Myers visited the library late in 2011 to show some of his amazing art which centers around innovative printmaking techniques with strong associations to historical artifacts and interactions with paper.\u00a0 Before and After Breath <\/em>(2009) is a series of 5 prints from an edition of 37 housed in a thin plywood box.\u00a0 The prints are the result of a forceful interaction between a pre-1908 carbon filament light bulb and a 50 ton industrial tooling press used to crush the bulb between sheets of carbon paper.\u00a0 The glass shards, which punctured the paper, and the carbon make successively fainter images with each imprint.\u00a0 Ideas emerge from the event: the release of \u201cbreath\u201d after over 100 years of being contained in a bulb, the symbolic use of carbon paper as media since carbon is one of the basic elements of life. Myers focuses on process and the use of found materials as much as the end result. \u00a0Another recent Myers acquisition is a series of 8 prints entitled Itself <\/em>, described as a \u201cremoval of carbon black xerographic toner, then re-used for its reproduction.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0 The edition is limited to the quantity of toner, (36 realized.) The texture of these prints evokes the surface of the moon as much as anything else.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>A few months later Myers returned to the library with his friend and fellow artist Sam Winston. The synergy between the two was apparent, lightened by a dose of British humor. \u00a0I spent a stimulating couple of hours listening to Winston explain his intricate work, a blend of visual art and story, with a very high level of craft thrown in.\u00a0 We bought 3 titles: Dictionary Story<\/em>, Made-Up True Story, <\/em>and Solace<\/em> from the Romeo and Juliet series.\u00a0 Winston also gave the library a letterpress print of an illustration he did for the New Yorker<\/em>, a whirling vortex of letters for a book review called \u201cThe English Wars\u201d (May 14, 2012)<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Dictionary Story<\/em>, written and designed by Winston, is in the form of an accordion book.\u00a0 \u201cFrom order to chaos and back to order \u2026 Dictionary Story<\/em> graphically illustrates the balance between a world that\u2019s safe but boring and a high risk universe full of creative possibilities.\u201d\u00a0 The graphics of the typography help explain what is happening in the story. \u00a0The story runs in one column against the outer edge of the page and the definitions opposite their words in another column on the reverse side. As the characters get out of hand, so does the graphic layout as letters tumble over the pages. Made-Up True Story<\/em> based on the interaction of different kinds of literature from train schedules to fairy tales is another typographic adventure with a charming story built in.\u00a0 Winston augments the effect with a fury of penciled scribbling.\u00a0 In the Romeo and Juliet series he explores the text of a classic work in an analytical dissection, cutting apart the letters and arranging them into 3 emotional states: passion, rage and solace.<\/p>\n

Both Myers\u2019 and Winston\u2019s paper art is in major collections in the U.S. and abroad, \u00a0including the British Library, the Victoria and Albert Museum, and the Library of Congress.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

[Posted by Sally Dickinson, Associate Curator] The Watkinson purchased several intriguing pieces from two British book artists this year.\u00a0 Rick Myers visited the library late in 2011 to show some of his amazing art which centers around innovative printmaking techniques with strong associations to historical artifacts and interactions with paper.\u00a0 Before and After Breath (2009) […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":122,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[38,5,22],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/commons.trincoll.edu\/watkinson\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1059"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/commons.trincoll.edu\/watkinson\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/commons.trincoll.edu\/watkinson\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/commons.trincoll.edu\/watkinson\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/122"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/commons.trincoll.edu\/watkinson\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1059"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/commons.trincoll.edu\/watkinson\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1059\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1073,"href":"https:\/\/commons.trincoll.edu\/watkinson\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1059\/revisions\/1073"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/commons.trincoll.edu\/watkinson\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1059"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/commons.trincoll.edu\/watkinson\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1059"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/commons.trincoll.edu\/watkinson\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1059"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}