Brad Freeman ~ Illinois

Nether Wallop
By Brad Freeman
Chicago, Illinois: Brad Freeman, 2003/2008. Edition of 200.

5.75 x 5.7"; 102 pages. Offset except the first four pages and colophon, which are letterpress. Offset pages printed on the Heiddelburg KORD at Nexus Press, Atlanta, in the fall 2002. Letterpress pages printed at the Center for Book & Paper Arts - Chicago. Paper: French' Dur-O-Tone Newsprint. Bound in Chicago, 2008. Conceived, designed, photographed, printed, and bound by Brad Freeman.

Brad Freeman: "Conceptually the book explores the shifting areas of intersections between the public and private self, especially looking at how individual lives are entwined within larger historical narratives. The approach is more poetic, visually and textually, rather than didactic, I hope. I chose the lightest weight paper I could run in the offset press (except the end sheets which are necessarily heavy to provide a strong structure to the binding at the point of joining the text block to the cover). This light paper and modest size of the physical dimensions of the book are meant to slow the reader, to impart a sense of delicacy, a sense of fragility of life. The light paper will hopefully suggest to the reader that a slow, careful reading is called for....

"There are a combination of found photographs and photographs that I took (held the camera, composed an image from the world in front of the lens, etc.). I only clarify this a bit because of the verb 'took' - we really do 'take' a bit of the world with photography I suppose....

"The 'unfinished' covers ... I could easily have printed something but preferred for this book a reference to the making of the book, the making of the world in which we live, the process that is life ..."
$250

Once Removed
By Brad Freeman & Anne George
Minneapolis, Minnesota: Bolger Concept to Print, 2003. Edition of 50.

17.25 x 12"; 32 pages.Offset printed. Images composed on a Mac Powerbook G4 and ibook. Font: Agenda. Photographs by both Brad Freeman and Anne George. Patterned green cloth boards with gilt stamped titling on front board. Case bound with jaconnet hinge binding.

Brad Freeman: "This book is a collaboration between the artist and Anne George for the Concept to Print Residency at MCBA. The project set forth by the artists was to explore through textual/visual means the concept of artificial flowers. Emanating from this point of reference were ideas of permanence, the constructs of female beauty, ephemerality, simulacra, fashion, color, shape, and much more."

MCBA: "Artists Anne George and Brad Freeman managed to fit a lot stuff in a very small package during the course of Minnesota Center for Book Arts' National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) - sponsored Concept to Print Residency. George, a Minneapolis artist, was selected from applicants nationwide to work with Freeman over an intense four-week period, using the state-of-the art production capabilities of Bolger Concept to Print. The collaboration resulted in 'Once Removed,' an engaging medley of text and image exploring the concept of artificiality. Though embodied predominantly by flowers - silk, plastic, and cut paper - the petulant metaphor is extended through layered imagery to move significant aspects of life itself. Lush colors, complex overprinting and partly occluded images suggest a disconcerting reality where even the dimensionality of the page is suspect."
$300

emerging sentience
By Brad Freeman & Johanna Drucker
Charlottesville / Atlanta: JAB Books, 2001. Edition of 50.

16.375" x 11"; 33 pages. Printed paper over boards with cloth spine. Printed on Mohawk Superfine and Monadnock Astrolite (both neutral pH) with Wikoff Sunfast Ink at Nexus Press in Atlanta. Photographs, digital prepress and printing by Brad Freeman. Text by Johanna Drucker. Signed and numbered by artists.

Project Statement: "Emerging Sentience was produced for the Poetry Plastique exhibition organized by Charles Bernstein and Jay Sanders at the Marianne Boesky Gallery. The conceptual foundation of the project is expressed concisely in its title: to make a work about sentience as an emergent property of intelligent systems. The original text had been written some time before, as one of the pieces in Deterring Discourse."

Brad Freeman: "It is based on the following question: Is conscious self awareness an emergent function of complex systems or is it the spark of life? In other words, is there such a thing as artificial intelligence in, say, computers?"

Johanna Drucker interview with Tate Shaw for JAB: "The piece, "Emerging Sentience," was part of a set of short pieces that were published as Deterring Discourse in the early 1990s. They each had new technology themes and also were responses to the closing down of public information and debate in the news around the first Gulf War. We lifted it out and condensed it slightly for this book. ...

"With Emerging Sentience we took the distilled, edited text and I laid it out so it would read from a distance, on the wall, in a grid. The text is a double text, embedded—one text is visible and legible when it is on the wall but it is set into a smaller text where it reads as well. We taped up the black and white text print outs and kept reworking that design until we liked it independent of the images. Brad was shooting pictures, but he made them work within the design after the text had been structured. It was an interesting exercise for both of us to see the difference in these approaches.

"As for the language—! My head just processes this way. I'm still trying to push this continual shift of register into a highly eclectic mode. The heterogeneity of contemporary language we encounter on a regular basis and the effects in terms of producing us as cultural/social/ historical subjects is something I am so aware of all the time. I always say my sensibility is created at the intersection of Mallarmé and the tabloid press. But of course, nothing is that simple. I don't use any mechanical devices—no word lists, no processing techniques or cut up—just the random access of memory and association as I write. Punning and double entendre paraphrase are like cross-links or hypertext phrases that let me step from one linguistic zone to another in a jump."
$850

The Grass is Greener
By Brad Freeman
Charlottesville & Atlanta: JAB Books & Nexus Press, 2001. Edition of 500.

7.25 x 5"; 48 unnumbered pages. Offset printed in duotones and CMYK on Astrolite by Monadnock. Case bound with illustrated covers. Photographed, designed, and digitally manipulated by Brad Freeman.

Nexus Press: "The pathos and beauty of mortal frustrations comprise the central theme of The Grass is Greener. The repetitive enclosure of the book form, with its capacity to enact a cycle of constraint within the bound sequence of its pages, reinforces the irony of this work — even as the final signature pulls back, catching its breath and ours in a dry laugh of response. This book is tight, succinct, and highly aesthetic as an expression of a wry, dark vision of the lived condition.

"Finely wrought images of grass changing color, the pacing motions of a caged tiger, the expressive response of a watching crowd —- in these three signatures the theme of this book is enacted as a cycle of repetition and frustration. Highly aesthetic, its attitude doesn't reinforce a sense of futility so much as comment ironically on the lived condition. Freeman's capacity to use the book form, print medium, color, intensity, and visual range is aptly demonstrated in this succinct, tightly crafted work."

The photographs were taken in Baton Rouge, Morgan City, and Tallahassee in 1999 and 1975.
$40

Nova Reperta
By Brad Freeman and Johanna Drucker
New Haven, Connecticut: JAB Books, 1999. Edition of 75.

16.625 x 10.125" (closed); 66 pages. Photographs and offset lithography (digital and photomechanical prepress) by Brad Freeman. Text by Johanna Drucker. Paper Mohawk Superfine. Hardbound with brass posts in boards and silk. With a stand of varnished red oak that serves as a base. Signed and numbered.

Brad Freeman: "Nova Reperta is a contemporary response to a book of engravings made from drawings by the Dutch artist Jan van der Straet (Johannes Stradanus) in which he celebrated those innovations that had shaped the modern world in the latter half of the 16th century. Produced in an era of rapid-seeming development and considerable global exploration, the spirit of Stradanus's work reflected an unqualified embrace of progress. Celebrating change wrought by various mechanical and technical inventions, including the reproduction through copper engraving that fostered the printing of images, his drawings documented many specific discoveries in pictorial formats.

“The authors' response is conceived as a dialogue with rather than an imitation of the original work. It makes no attempt to mimic Stradanus's pictorial strategies, nor to be consistent with his celebratory spirit. Rather, it is a critical reflection upon the extension of that world view of progress from a perspective possible more than four centuries later.”
$2,100 (Last Copy)

MuzeLink aka MzLK. THE TOURS.
BY Brad Freeman
Purchase, New York: JAB Books, 1997. Edition of 100.

11 x 8.5"; 168 pages; opens to 11 x 17". Traditional and alternative graphic arts darkroom pre-press as well as computer generated photo-based imagery offset printed by Brad Freeman on Warren's LOE dull coated 100 lb. text in around ten colors. Duotones, tritones and four color separations throughout. Case bound and hand sewn by the artist. Signed and numbered by Freeman on page 167.

Brad Freeman: "MuzeLink is a personal / printing history starting with a playful deconstruction of the offset printing process then linking to four color reproductions of 19th century chromolithographs (the progenitor of offset lithography). These images provide a succinct view of the social values of that time and place. This is a complex book which resonates backward and forward, referencing the book as concept and historical form, and the book as an artist's medium."

Nancy Princenthal, On Paper Nov. - Dec. 1997: "... There is nothing schematic about this book. Presented in unique covers collaged from set-up sheets titled in silver, and bound in Asahi silk, Freeman's visual feast can be sampled as freely as any hot-linked hypertext. It is served, however, with the composure of someone who knows his story will satisfy even those who read it from front to back."
$1,500 (a few copies remaining)

Murder of Crows
BY Brad Freeman
Philadelphia: Varicose Productions / The University of the Arts Philadelphia, 1991. Edition of 65.

5.6 x 6.7"; 16 pages (unpaginated). Offset printed in five colors on Mohawk Superfine. Softcover with sewn binding. Text and drawings by Brad Freeman.

A haunting dream sequence of alienation and loss. Etiolated drawings reflect absence of spirit. An exaltation of larks is supplanted by a murder of crows. No saving surrealistic humor here. It's the bleakest form of adolescent pit – except it gave us this book, a victory of sorts for art.
$75 (Last copy)

SIMWAR
BY Brad Freeman
Philadelphia: Varicose Productions / Borowsky Center for Publication Arts, 1991. Edition of 300.

6.5 x 6"; 30 pages. Softcover. Offset printed in duotones on Lustro dull. Stapled binding.

Freeman recounts how his idea of the Vietnam War (could be any war, couldn't it?) shifts from heroic idealism to grimmer reality.

Brad Freeman: "Television and video game images of simulated and real war raise questions as to how these technologies separate people from the tragic consequences of war. A parallel autobiographical text relates the author's adolescent experience in a hospital with men wounded in war."
$75 (Last four copies)