Artists' Books / Book Arts : Artists' Books by Theme

"Aanikoobijigan // Waawaashkeshi is the fourth component in a multi-year project by artist Dylan Miner. The project began when Miner located documents indicating that Narcisse Miner - the artist's gichi-anikobijigan (great-great-grandfather) - was charged with poaching a deer on traditional lands. In Fall 2016, Miner exhibited a body of work about this event at Artspace in Ontario. He later attempted to harvest a deer on the same land, near chii-biziigong (the Shebeshekong River,) and subsequently exhibited an additional body of artwork. As an extension of these projects, this book - Aanikoobijigan // Waawaashkeshi - evokes the ancestors, the animals, the sacredness of place; it includes 13 lunar months and 13 Indigenous constellations. These 26 starmaps are each drawn with 110 stars to honour the 110 years since Narcisse Miner was charged by the settler-colonial nation-state for asserting his Indigenous harvesting rights." -- Publisher's website

"Stories Behind Bars was inspired by the author’s job as a Spanish interpreter in the US courts. It consists of four individually bound silkscreen printed booklets: in one, a young man is deported using video teleconferencing, another gives some brief history of immigration detention, and all tell stories of immigrants in U.S. prisons and jails. The stories give the reader an insight into the complex issues surrounding the immigration debate. The four separate pamphlets are housed in a slipcase with a barred window. Silkscreen printed."--Women's Studio Workshop

"In The Veil is Seen Only When it is Lifted, the artist provides accumulated data as an instrument for breaching this impasse. Origoni visually restructures this conversation, arranging statistics with simple, playful design and breaking up the codex's linear narration. The book is composed with two studies; their bindings fall on opposite sides of the book. A Coptic-bound section presents quantitative data and the spiral-bound section reports experience-based data. Viewers are invited to read these parts separately or simultaneously, pages can be overlapped in patterns that unveil new information." -- Women's Studio Workshop

Uncovering white privilege is a collaborative book which seeks to help readers uncover white privilege and understand how to challenge it. Text by Rachel Laser, lawyer, advocate and strategist who has dedicated her career to making our country more inclusive. Design and production by Camden M. Richards, book artist and graphic designer. Illustrations by Kerry McAleer-Keeler, book artist, printmaker and associate professor for George Washington University.

"Mare Nostrum is a bilingual book in English and Arabic that highlights the Mediterranean Immigration Crisis; People from Sub-Saharan Africa, the middle and far East come to North Africa to cross the Mediterranean using primitive boats and with the help of traffickers of immigrants. According to the missing migrant project, more than 23600 missing migrants have been recorded in the Mediterranean since 2014.

Images of the boats are derived from drawings of boats on pottery from predynastic Egypt. In ancient Egypt, boats were used for ceremonial purposes. Most importantly, taking the king's bodies from one side of the Nile to another, moving from their temporary life, and death to their afterlife and eternity. This is parallel to the immigrant's journey, moving from poverty and conflict to freedom and stability." --from artist's website

"El título 2219 alude a la distancia en kilómetros de la frontera que divide Venezuela y Colombia. Este proyecto, que comenzó en 2011 mientras Alicia vivía en Bogotá, ha sido expuesto en diferentes museos y galerías en Colombia, Venezuela, España, Estados Unidos y México; fue finalista en 2016 en el III Concurso Iberoamericano de Fotografía NexoFoto; en 2017 ganó la convocatoria del llamado a publicaciones del CDF Ediciones en el Centro de Fotografía de Montevideo en Uruguay; y fue editado como libro a finales del 2018." -- Artist's website

Single sheets of cardstock coptic-bound in cloth-covered boards with a cutout-leather, female silhouette attached to the front board. The title is printed in blind on the leather. The early pages are printed on the recto side with text within the female silhouette. A sheet of plastic is attached at the fore-edge to cover the verso of each page. Starting on the first page, laser-cut text moves up from the feet of the silhouette and progresses to the last page where it covers the entire silhouette. The laser-cut text recounts the author's struggle to understand the English language readings required for her MFA. Issued in a cloth-covered drop-spine box with the title on a leather label inlaid on the front.

"Four-color offset lithography printed book was created as a series of two page board book spreads that minimize the visual distraction of a 'gutter' on the panoramic view of each skyscape. The edges of the book are rounded and gilded in the fashion of religious breviaries or missals. This is a book of border beatitudes. This work comments on the complicted attitudes of Americans on illegal immigration from Mexico. The cover shows a photograph of the area of Southern Arizona which is the most active in terms of migration across the Sonoran desert, and where thousands have lost their lives in the deadly desert heat. The interior pages show the progression of a typical high desert day from dawn to sunset with a single line of text on each two page spread" -- Vamp and Tramp.

"Funded by the Pew Foundation for Arts and Heritage, Friends, Peace, and Sanctuary brought five artists into the conversation with Syrian and Iraqi individuals resettled in Philadelphia. Driven by questions about displacement and refuge, history and experience, the project explores art's capacity to build empathy and create a deeper sense of belonging. Cummins began the task of creating an artist's book for Friends, Peace, and Sanctuary by interviewing four participating families. ... Out of over one hundred transcribed pages, Cummins selected forty-eight excerpts, which she then pieced together to create a narrative arc. ... Text blocks are severed, then reprinted as quarto-sections on corresponding pages of four separate books. As in the case of the resettlers themselves, these stories must be reunited in order to be read, understood, and made whole again. Since the structure is also two-sided, with half the pages printed upside down, the reader is forced to puzzle out where and how to begin, and what order in which to read the pages"--Prospectus

Artist's statement: "Inspired by Yoko Ono's 'Grapefruit,' this boxed set includes a Coptic-bound book with 60 Instructions to Save the Planet. Some sincere, some tongue-in-cheek, some meant to shock the reader into action, these instructions call attention to climate change and the real consequences that we're already beginning to experience. Along with the book are 4 Biospheres, wooden globes with accordion books held together magnetically."

This game was designed and produced by Julie Chen at Flying Fish Press in Berkeley, California. All elements were letterpress printed except for the pages of the ledger book which were offset printed by Coast Litho in Oakland, California. The various game pieces and game box were lasercut and otherwise fabricated at the press. Special thanks to Macy Chadwick for assisting with the printing and binding, and to Elizabeth McDevitt for editing.
"The object of this game is...to have the player create a meaningful abstract composition on the game board..."-- from Rules of Play.

"Inspired by old game boards such as Parcheesi, Sorry!, and Chinese checkers, each symmetrical design began with a grid. These grids encompass a quadrant from each of the original game boards. From there, they blossomed. Like mandala designs or the views seen through a kaleidoscope, the Gameboard/Symmetries has no right way up."

"This is a game book of constellations. The book consists of a manual, and a box of card leaflets,on which constellations are illustrated using a collection of pierces. Readers are allowed to play a game using these card leaflets to discover various constellations. Try looking at them with light behind the card, and imagine looking up at the sky. This will stimulate looking at the real nigh [sic] sky, allowing the reader to immerse into the beautiful constellations."

"Printed on a continuous sheet folded accordion style with 18 panels on each side when unfolded. All panels are unnumbered. The "outside" panels are printed in a red and black geometric design and include title and colophon panels. The "inside" panels contain an illustration spread across all 18 panels.
Lying end to end, The Map of Neighboring Territories book is a folded map of shifting perspectives on place, location, and time. The patterns were inspired by fantasy and myth iconography common to early action/adventure video games."

"Ul’nigid’ was uniquely made to honor my maternal Grandmother, Martha Reed-Bark. She was the first figure i looked up to and learned from. She took care of my entire family in numerous ways and had a special connection with each of my family members. The book is titled Ul’nigid’ (Cherokee translation: strong) to represent her being and her spirit.

Inside of the basket lies an accordion fold pamphlet that includes 5 poems that have been letterpress printed using Bembo metal type along with accents of Cherokee syllabary* metal type printed across the bottom of the pages. Each poem is a memory, but each poem is also a way to pass on the essence and stories of my grandmother to my son. The poems all share themes of home, language, healing, love and lineage."--artist's website

“بابا آب داد (Baabaa Aab Daad)- Father Gave Water is an homage to language and tactility inspired by my toddler’s wood blocks and my love for the Persian language. This phrase, Baabaa Aab Daad made of wood block modules is translated to ‘Father Gave Water’ which is the first sentence first graders learn in Iran. The reason for this is that it has very basic sound and lettering using the A, B, and D (the first letters in the Persian alphabet which is similar to English being an Indo-European language).
Additionally, I have embedded in this book a small history of a wonderful man who further developed the first grade book and co-founded the nomadic schools in Iran. I decided to entangle him in the book since my research on the phrase ‘Baabaa Aab Daad’ brought him to the foreground. He appeared in a lovely movie titled Gabbeh by Makhmalbaaf in the 90’s showing the simple life of a rug fiber colorist in Shiraz and the dream concept behind making Gabbeh (a kind of simple colorful nomadic thick Persian rug). He was also an herbal colorist of fiber in his real life.”--vendor's website

Xu Bing spent seven years gathering materials, experimenting, revising, and arranging thousands of pictograms to construct this narrative. The result is a readable story without words recording 24 hours in the day of the life of a typical urban white-collar worker. Using an exclusively visual language, the text could be published anywhere without translation.

"Twenty years ago I made Book from the Sky, a book of illegible Chinese characters that no one could read. Now I have created Book from the Ground, a book that anyone can read. Though quite different, the two books share something in common: regardless of a reader's language or level of education, the books treat all readers equally. Book from the Sky was an expression of doubt and alarm regarding preexisting systems of writing; Book from the Ground expresses the ideal of the single, universally understood language, and my sense of the direction of contemporary communication." -- artist's statement

"'Corruption' tracks ten inflammatory quotations from world leaders as the words are translated across language barriers. Each chapter cycles a [highly-publicized] statement through the languages of the world's 80 most influential nations. The machine translation (MT) platforms used are noted throughout the work. The final translation for each chapter is presented on a full spread, typeset in a manner that means to accentuate its new poetic, interpretive essence. A folded pamphlet titled 'We Will Bury You' is mounted to the inside back cover. The booklet explains the origins and misunderstandings surrounding the infamous mis-translated quote by Nikita Khrushchev. It functions as a case-study that articulates the implications of this project. An art work in book form ... This work of experimental text art and process poetry is an anthology of experiments with the degradation of hostile and defensive messages delivered by world leaders. The collection tracks ten quotations as the words travel across language barriers. The process of translation, exacerbated by cycling through a chain of 80 languages, transforms specific ideas into something general, ambiguous, stripped of its original power."

The Trail was produced at the Paper Mill, University of Wisconsin-Madison. Cyanotype printing on handmade paper (Wisconsin red badger shirts).
This artists' book was created August 2019-May 2022 during my graduate studies in University of Wisconsin-Madison. In my position as a non-citizen, my personal life was under surveillance during that time. Juxtaposing the documentation and personal data collected by the US government on me as an international student with imagery of plant specimens that have collected outside the United States and now housed in the UW Herbarium, The Trail aims to build a connection between the natural world and myself in order to consider the experience of international migration. This project embeds personal details that are shared with US immigration and customs enforcement, information that enables a precise surveillance of movement - alongside evidence of plants that have been carried far from their natural home into the UW collection.

"Foot in the Door was created to serve as an application for a graphic design position. The shoe is a replica of the artist's favorite shoes, which were also worn during the interview.
The repeated pattern of text printed upon the paper surface was designed from Julie VonDerVellen's résumé content. Julie's research expands on traditional storytelling and memoir presentation. Significant moments - personal stories as well as those of friends and family - are interwoven into her paper structures. The garments and shoes are recreations of actual attire surrounding each of the moments.Foot in the Door was constructed and stitched from paper, cardboard, acrylic paint, and laser jet prints."

"This edition of one hundred and fifty copies is made with the following papers: Fabriano tan, green and blue mouldmade cover; Barcham Green handmade India, Boxley and India Office; Twinrocker Aura and Lilac Wind; and from MacGregor-Vinzani Blue Fleck, Brockport and the abaca lilac, pink, tan and grey for the binding concertina. The book was designed by Claire Van Vliet based on a binding structure developed by Hedi Kyle and made with Linda Wray and boxes made by Judi Conant, Guildhall, Vermont. The spine paper can slip out of the front cover so the book can accordian out."
FROM INSERT: "Aunt Sallie's Lament [is] a poem that is the autobiography of a spinster quilter stitched with mutterings that accumulate as the cut pages are turned becoming a diamond quilt square. The binding is an accordion that can stretch to 105 inches revealing all the stanzas."

"Don't Cut Your Hair It's Beautiful began as an exhibition in which I explored hair as both a material and a concept through experimental printing processes. The work questions personal rituals surrounding hair, constructs associated with hair in Western culture, and the shift in value when hair is unattached to bodies. In this ongoing inquiry I explore my own experience with femininity, womanhood, my relationship with my own hair and how it conforms to or disrupts constructed norms.... This work is continued by Don't Cut Your Hair It's Beautiful in an effort to disrupt and explore the relationship between hair that is considered valuable and hair that must be hidden, removed, and made invisible. The book includes contributions from twelve creatives in particular, but not limited to, those working with hair as a subject or material. These individuals were invited to respond to one of several prompts or to generate their own response about hair on the body. They could also choose to include an image, either found or made. These twelve writings provide thoughts and experiences surrounding hair, multiple points of access, and themes connected to hair on the body including: shame, resistance, and identity...."

"We might assume that identity is largely self-determined, but many factors, some easily discernible and others hidden from view, go into the process of defining who we are. The persona we embrace as our own is not solely made up of conscious choices but is instead a constant process of adaptation to our surroundings. For people of color there is an added layer of external expectations and assumptions that must be confronted. Family, community, and everyday interactions with strangers all influence our continually evolving sense of self in both overt and subtle ways.

I took my own identity for granted as a somewhat finished process until the pandemic changed almost everything about everyday life. In this new environment, could I continue to be the exact same person that I was before? Pandemic times forced me to consider my sense of self with fresh eyes and to notice how tightly the past and the present are inextricably intertwined." - Artist's website

Photocopied on white paper with a black border; hand illustrated, some color. Cover is collaged white and blue paper with crossing black lines. A slip case completely encloses the book with four flaps. Its whole background is a collage of photocopied handwriting on brown paper. The left flap forms the upper cover, and has a blue paper with black crossing lines; a hole torn in the blue paper shows a yellow pencil stub glued in place. The lower cover has the same blue and black paper collaged with a lamp that has a pencil as its wick. The right flap is collaged with blue and black paper, with the title and author's name mounted and painted with blue and orange. Inside the slip case is a large sketch of two people sitting back to back, each holding a leaf, pencil, and hammer. Between their heads is a crescent moon made of pencils, forming the upper flap. The lower flap is small and unadorned.

Unique handmade artist's book consisting of found objects, collage, handwritten text, labels, tracing pattern paper, mounted and/or enclosed in 6 folded paper covers sewn at fold with collage on covers, all together in a vintage pink printed box for fine stationery, consisting of paper and envelopes; edition of one, signed and dated by the artist. Signed by the artist.

Este libro fue impreso durante el lluvioso otoño de mil novecientos 80 y seis en los talleres tipográficos de la Universidad de Wisconsin. Century Old Style, Palatino y Bodoni fueron los tipos de letra utilizados en la elaboración del texto. Las imágenes diseñadas por Martha Gomez, estan inspiradas en motivos africanos. Papel hecho a mano también por la artista fue empeado en la producción de este único ejemplar."
Unsigned. Non-adhesive binding. Issued in a drop-back box.
Pages are layered accordion-style, and contain elaborate cut-out and pop-up designs. Some of the geometric images have machine-sewn patterning. Interspersed between the pop-ups are pamphlets printed with the poetry of Puerto Rican poet Luis Pales Matos.

Esta edición de Del Ciruelo y Otras Observaciones de Israel Domínguez consta de doscientos ejemplares manufacturados e illuminados a mano por las Ediciones Vigía, en su colección del San Juan. En su realización se usó papel blanco, papel craff, raíces naturales, tul negro, cordel y una intensa iluminación manual."
Cover shows hand with eye in palm; twig attached. Cover held closed with net-like material. Some pages folded over. Includes small folded insert about the author and folded leaf at end with cover illustration repeated.

Artist's statement: "The format and materials of this book reference Hermetic Waste (Gefn Press, 1986) which was completed the summer following the Chernobyl disaster. The collagraph prints in Hermetic Waste were derived from alchemical engravings - here the calligraphic line drawings are derived from science illustrations in children's text books (Science from the Beginning edited by Hampson and Evans, 1962). Redrawn and merging, the pictorial 'facts' depict a disrupted 'nature.' Poetic texts sit inside the imagery, functioning as an integrated caption. They describe processes by which toxic material enters into the environment. The back of each page lists hazardous wastes. Plastic interleaving features in both books, referencing materials used in the storage of waste. (How little has changed in twenty years.) The book, in its acrylic case, is a statement about the storage of nuclear waste in plastic. The line drawings are derived from children's textbooks, redrawn to show a disrupted nature. The toxic wastes, listed partially alphabetically, are printed on both sides of the embossed paper, each page separated by a plastic sheet. The unstable and hence inappropriate and hazardous use of plastic to contain toxic waste is emphasized by the diverse deformations of each of the plastic sheets."

Artist's statement: "The tenuous boundary between living nature and human encroachment is the primary unifying theme in my work. The dislocated, discarded, mass-produced objects found littering the edges, cracks, and seams of our natural world provide evidence of our collective post-purchase consumer amnesia, the forgetfulness that erases our culpability. Local beach-found flotsam, PETE water bottles, plastic toy animals and product packages are but a few of the found items that I use as subject and medium in my work. ... The paintings, based on my photographs, present the beach trash as monolithic in the seascape and provide a visual metaphor that hints at the magnitude of ocean pollution. Striving for a light-hearted touch while holding onto a subversive tone towards the problem of habitat destruction, I present a tongue-in-cheek taxonomy of our new synthetic post-consumer 'creatures of the sea' that now rise to take the place of native marine species. By lovingly and meticulously crafting 'beautiful' images of conventionally 'ugly' beach cast-offs, I hope to create provocative juxtapositions of form and idea that give dark witness to a looming global disaster."

"The hand set type is primarily genuine ATF Century Expanded, Oldstyle, and Schoolbook, but also includes every last font of the type inventory held by The Heavy Duty Press as of January 2022. Printed silently with Spiffy the Vandercook SP 15 on Kitakata paper and bound by hand with a pamphlet stitch, tucked into Bugra covers, and slipped into muslin tea bags screen printed by The Factory in Milwaukee, Wisconsin"--Publisher's description

"Panorama is a warning, a challenge, a clarion call to action. It begins with 'You do not want to believe that time is running out' and ends with 'What matters now is whether you will think beyond your own survival / And respond to the challenges that await you.' Its five spreads present in a visual, tactile, and focused way the situation: You are here and now, and you are in denial; the earth's environment is delicate and endangered; 'everything is inextricably linked' and 'your failure to change is having serious repercussions'; species are disappearing at an alarming rate; 'your habitat is in peril.' What will you do?" -- Vamp and Tramp

COLOPHON: "This book first began as a reaction to time I spent on the island of Cape Breton, Nova Scotia in 2003. As with most of my books, it was to serve as a summation of the work I was making about the landscape of that place and the various people who live there. But I became fascinated by the culture, lore and history of the Mi'kmaq People as my research continued, until it became the sole subject of the book. Begun in 2005, it has taken four years to complete, much longer than anticipated in part due to old, worn out press rollers, various wrong turns and not quite getting all of those very important ducks absolutely in a row."

COLOPHON: "This book was created at UW-Madison in the autumn of 2019, prompted by Janet Gilmore and Evelyn Howell's course Folklore, Plants and Design. The pages are screen printed on handmade flax and cotton paper with walnut dye sourced from the tree that grows beside my childhood home. Thank you to Mark Hark for her generosity, expertise, and the beautiful cover papers, Molli Pauliot for her guidance navigating the Wisconsin Historical Society archives, and the current owners of the Old Spring Tavern for providing access to the garden and a bucket full of fallen walnuts."

"Books & nature are similar - more time equals a richer experience. ... From Here to There on Emerald Lake takes the viewer on a canoe excursion. Through a non-linear path and cutouts one sees glimpses of various fawn and flora. It reminds us that nature has secrets and we must look carefully to unveil them." -- Vamp and Tramp

Artist's statement: "I live in New Bedford, Massachusetts and entered Secrets into a traveling book art show called Shelter. The call for entries left open the interpretation of "shelter" to be as wide as the artist needed. I chose to explore psychological shelter with my book, and the writing inside the book is meant to be a secret. I authored and carved the text before assembling the parts, and no one knows what it says (it's not earth shaking, though)....Each surface of the book is carved following the growth ring of the tree from which the wood came. All those waves and curves are not my doing; they are natural formations of growth. The ivy is carved one, two or three layers into the spine and cover, also following the natural growth pattern. Because of my technique, every book is one of a kind. Hence there is no edition number."

Artist's statement: "My recent work revolves around ecological themes and sustainable design. Growth is based on plant forms and their structure at the cellular level with imagery that is both real and suggested. The book was hand printed using aluminum plate lithography and was designed so that several pages of the book were printed on one sheet, minimizing waste."