Flying Fish Press

Flying Fish Press ~ California (Julie Chen)

Memento By Julie Chen Berkeley [California]: Flying Fish Press, 2012. Edition of 50. A custom-made copper case/locket (1.8125 x 2.375 x 0.75") by Christina Kemp houses on one side a miniature book (1.5 x 2.125 x 0.375", 56 pages) letterpress printed on Kitakata and opens on the other side to reveal a triptych. The case/locket and a web strip (for wearing the locket) are housed in cavities in a padded clamshell box (5.625 x 6.75 x 2.875") with title on the cover. The colophon slips into a groove in the box's base. Materials: copper box: bookcloth; binder's board; satin; plexiglass. Julie Chen: "Memento is about the fragility of the book and the power of reading. It includes a miniature book that is housed in a metal locket that allows the reader to wear the book close to the body. The simple act of carrying a book on one's person has diverse implications depending on circumstance and place. The locket also houses a triptych that contains a woven token commemorating Al-Mutanabbi Street in Iraq. The texts on the woven strips are taken from the preambles to the constitutions of the United States and Iraq. The image surrounding the token is of a booksellers stall on Al-Mutanabbi Street prior to the bombing in 2007. While the commemorative aspect of this piece is clear, the content of Memento addresses philosophical questions about the nature of reading and information transfer in our own lives as well as within the context of western culture in general. This edition is part of An Inventory of Al-Mutanabbi Street." Calling for attention to things dear, fragile, and gone, Memento has definite parallels to Victorian mourning jewelry. This is Julie Chen's first miniature since the paper confections of Bon Bon Mots, but here the sense of seriousness has been raised several levels. Replete with the touches Chen is deservedly noted for – sensitive text, impeccable craft, design ingenuity – Memento takes its place with Chen's more somber works like Panorama and The Veil. $1,575	Click image to enlage


Glimpse By Julie Chen and Barb Tetenbaum Berkeley, California / Portland, Oregon: Triangular Press / Flying Fish Press, 2011. Edition of 100. 8.125 x 11.25 x 1.25"; 15 sleeves, 15 cards. Printed letterpress from handset type, wire, antique news cuts, dingbats, and photopolymer plates. Pages formed by envelope sleeves open ended on right. Each sleeve with miniature square window cutouts, and no sleeve with the same cutout pattern. In the form of a tablet with overlapping staggered 7.5 x 3.5" pages. Sleeve enclosure is attached to box of cloth-covered boards with title tipped on front. Signed by both artists. Triangular Press / Flying Fish Press: "Working together again after almost a decade (Ode to a Grand Staircase, 2001), Glimpse is a new collaboration between Barb Tetenbaum and Julie Chen inspired by a conversation about how a person translates their life experience into a narrative form: prominent events may stand out as the nameable moments, yet it is the space between these events that life, in fact, is lived. "The mid-century photo album structure contains text written by Chen, examining this question. Her text is printed on both surfaces of each of the 15 hinged sleeves. Windows in the sleeves reveal small glimpses of the pull-out cards, each written and printed by Tetenbaum and containing dates and events of the non-important moments of her life. These texts are supported by diagrams, grids, and mundane imagery." Working together again after almost a decade (Ode to a Grand Staircase, 2001), two divas of the book arts world present a life lesson elegantly – as expected – and precisely – which is not quite a red herring, but at least pinkish. Glimpse contrasts the series of discrete events we use to define ourselves and the unexamined "spaces between events … when much of life is actually lived." The suggestion is that we should pay more attention to those in between times ("waiting for something else" times, perhaps, in John Lennon's terms). If we want certainty, as the precision of the books surface design seems to suggest is possible, we'll be disappointed, as the subtext – both in design and text – suggests. The glimpses provided by the book – through the windows in each sleeve – don't offer much with which to construct a human being, or even suggest at the woman/women behind them. If you pull out the cards, note the precise date and time, take in the fragmentary description of an event, make yourself aware of the stylized antique news cuts laden with stereotypes and implied significance – what do you have? What remains is the sense of something significant in the artifact and its implied significance. Perhaps the lesson is that we shouldn't be suborned by the obvious; it's always too scant, too easily misconstrued by our own desire for self-myth. It's part and parcel of Yeats' observation: We still can't tell the dancer from the dance, the water from the wave. We are. And some can make art. It's a glimpse of what we should cherish. $975	Click image for more Click image to enlarge


How Books Work By Julie Chen and Clifton Meador Berkeley, California / Chicago: Julie Chen and Clifton Meador, 2011. 4 x 6"; 16 pages. Offset lithography using non-process colors. Interleave structure. Laid in letterfold paper wrapper with slip-in closure. Written, designed, and produced by Chen and Meador at Flying Fish Press in Berkeley, California and the Center for Book and Paper at Columbia College in Chicago. In an age of electronic media and virtual simulacra "What is a book?" is a common question. This is the question that Chen and Meador, two veteran practitioners near the top of any serious list of contemporary book artists, address in "How Books Work." This elegantly simple book marries structure and content in the best tradition of artists' books. It begins: "What is a book? A book is an experience." And ends: "A book starts with an idea. And ends with a reader." $25	Click image for more


Invented Landscape By Julie Chen Berkeley, California: Flying Fish Press, 2010. Edition of 50. 5 x 9.75" closed, extends to 66"; 24 pages. A combination of letterpress printing and monoprinting. Accordion structure with a variation on a structure originally designed by Hedi Kyle. Housed in 5.5 x 9.75 x 2.75" two flap portfolio cloth-covered box. Magnet closure. Flying Fish Press: "Invented Landscape is an exploration about the perception of the world beyond a person’s immediate physical experience. The idea that we know and understand the larger world through print and digital media may be more of an illusion than we realize. ... This book presents the reader with a contemplative and intimate reading experience as well as a very wide three-dimensional sculptural object." Julie Chen, colophon: "The initial idea for this book came out of my participation in The Fourth International Biennial for the Artists' Book hosted by The Bibliotheca Alexandrina in Alexandria, Egypt, in the spring of 2010. The assigned theme of nomadism led me to do much research and reflecting about the steady decline of the grasslands of Central Asia and Mongolia, and the disappearance of nomadic pastoralism in those parts of the world. In 2010, Mongolia experienced one of the harshest winters in a decade causing catastrophic losses of herds that may force many nomadic families to abandon their traditional way of life." $1,375	Click image for more


A Guide to Higher Learning By Julie Chen Berkeley, California: Flying Fish Press, 2009. Edition of 100. 11.25 x 11.75 x 3.75" cloth covered clam shell box. Letterpress printed from photopolymer plates. Interior lid contain instructions on how to unfold the book. Bottom tray has instructions on how to refold the book. Includes 34 x 34" folded felt cloth for displaying and reading the book. Cloth folds into the center of the structure. Book consists of a central box surrounded by rows of square pages on all four sides. To read the book the whole assembly must be lifted from the tray and placed on the center of the cloth. Each square page is numbered clockwise. The reader thus begins with page 1 on the right and continues around the structure clockwise through page 12. Accompanying the structure is a 3 x 3" book, "The Answer Book." It is laid in the center of the book assemblage. Julie Chen, in "The Answer Book": "A Guide to Higher Learning includes many elements that are highly technical in both language and concept which often go far beyond my own level of knowledge. I would like to thank the following people for their contributions to this project. Henri Ducharme and Laura Norin supplied all the mathematical formulas and equations that appear in the book and spent much time and effort trying to explain to me what they mean. The intricate patterns of lines that appear with the equations are origami crease patterns by Robert J. Lang and are used with his kind permission. "The mathematical statements are from the four branches of mathematics: abstract algebra, analysis, geometry, and number theory. The abstract algebra and analysis loops demonstrate the central concept of unity in mathematics. Each of the four equations has a version of '1' as its solution. The geometry loop evokes the surprise of newer geometries incompatible with Euclid's mathematics: once thought to be true absolutely is now true only conditionally. The vastness of mathematics yet unknown is hinted at by the conjectures in the number theory loop. Mathematics have been trying to prove or disprove these conjectures for centuries, but still do not know if either is true. "The origami crease patterns of Robert J. Lang that appear in the four quadrants of the book are shown here in miniature with descriptions and opus numbers of the amazingly detailed forms that can be made, each from a single piece of folded paper, by following the diagrams. "At the center of this book is the beginning of an Ulam spiral, which illustrates the discovery that if the counting numbers are arranged on a spiral grid, the prime numbers - shown as red dots - form surprising and unexpected patterns." (Finalist in the 2011 MCBA Prize) $2,175	Click image for more


Panorama By Julie Chen Berkeley: Flying Fish Press, 2008. Edition of 100. 10 x 21 x 2"; 12 pages. Three foldout pages and two double-page engineered structures. Cloth-covered boards with paper titles on front board. Housed in matching cloth covered box with magnet closure. Colophon: "Letterpress printed from wood blocks and photopolymer plates by Julie Chen and Alan Hillesheim, and assembled in the studios of Flying Fish Press by Julie Chen, Erin Latimer, and Kimi Taira. Special thanks to Erin Latimer for her stalwart support in the studio through the year-long process of birthing this book." 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? As always with Julie Chen’s work, it begins with an elegant box, suggesting that what is inside can be contained. But once the pages begin opening, Panorama expands in two and then three dimensions. The problem is bigger, more complex, and more entwined than we might think. And as always the craft and formal invention are lusciously overwhelming and yet on point. Three sections of the book demand physical interaction with a lift tab structure; two sections turn into grand — in both senses — sculptures (to call them pop-ups would be an injustice). You might not want to hear what Panorama says; you might not believe what it purports; but if this doesn’t elicit at least an inward gasp, it may be too late for you anyway. $2,400	Click image for more Click image for more


Full Circle By Julie Chen Berkeley, California: Flying Fish Press, 2006. Edition of 100. Rotating wheel in a 15" x 15" x 3" silk-covered box. Full Circle — like so many of Julie Chen's bookworks — offers the sensation of being caught up in something at once momentous and personal. Another elegantly clothed, unmistakable Chenbox opens to reveal a marvel of execution and effect. Once again, Julie Chen takes physicality, an essential part of all books, and makes it a vital element of expression. A spinning wheel — that the reader controls and rotates — suggests a clock, or progressive stations along some journey. The contents of the book are viewed by turning a wheel and pausing whenever text and image are centered in 4 windows. At 3 intervals a drawer lines up with the opening in the front of the box. Pulling a tab reveals a tongue-like 3-dimensional diagram of the mind and heart in relation to each other. The subject? The clue is on the face of the top of the box: an array of intersecting circles hold phrases like "Things I was told to believe in," "Things I would like to believe in," "Things I used to believe in." Full Circle is about belief, or more pointedly, about cycles of belief. As the wheel moves from stage 1 to stage 12 (12 stations?), the windows offer four different ways we can chart belief: a single word, objects, the image of a body part, a sentence. At station 1 are the single word INQUIRY, some tear-shaped egg-like objects, the image of a closed mouth, and the sentence "I look for you but you will not speak to me." At each stage the windows have new content. At each stop connections between the windows are left up to the reader. And, as the stages progress, so is the developing story. Full Circle demonstrates that the cycle of belief is the same for all, but different in the particulars. Over and over, Chen's works have a foundation of social connection. Early in her career, the connection was in collaboration with others; lately, her works have insisted on reader/viewer participation, directly as in Personal Paradigms or now indirectly as in Full Circle. Is it about how belief intersects with human relationships? Is it looking at religious belief? When queried, Julie Chen wrote, "the text if purposefully ambiguous about whether the main reference is religion or relationship. It's not exactly about either, but more about the daily cycles of belief that we go through all the time without even realizing it, but that make life bearable. Things such as believing that we will never get seriously ill or lose our jobs—can't happen to me, right? We don't actually have any control of these things, and have to rely on faith to not be swallowed up by anxiety all the time. The objects in the window aren't meant to have deep meaning in relationship to the text. Rather, they are like talismen, reminders or lucky charms — place markers for belief. I chose them because I liked the intuitive connections which are not easily explainable. I like the idea that viewers are searching for their own ideas of what the objects might mean." The experience of Full Circle is the practical gloss on the bleak view — I can't go on, I go on — Beckett presented to the world 50 years ago in Waiting for Godot. Full Circle acknowledges the presence of ambiguity in our lives, but, most wonderfully, demonstrates that ambiguity and delight can co-exist. Julie Chen's bookworks have always been lucid without being transparent, accessible without being simplistic. Her recent works, most pointedly True to Life and now Full Circle, offer evidence that memory is fluid and that getting though the day (and the night) calls for belief and the suspension of belief in an ongoing cycle. $2100	Click image for more Click image to enlarge Click image to enlarge


View By Julie Chen Berkeley, CA: 2006. Edition of 100. 6.25 x 13.625 x 4.625" cream and brown cloth box. A magic wallet structure: two books recount and process a dream and a shadow box offers the dreamscape. Written, illustrated, and designed by Julie Chen. Letterpress printed using a combination of photopolymer plates, wood blocks, and pressure plates, and assembled at the studios of Flying Fish Press. Julie Chen: "Based on a personal experience of loss, View is a bookwork that deals directly with ideas of coming to terms with mortality. The piece includes two books that are housed in a compartmented box. After the books have been read, the box can be tilted forward to reveal a mesmerizing view of a miniature world." "We dream the answers before we ask the questions." $1,675	Click image for more


Personal Paradigms A Game of Human Experience By Julie Chen Berkeley, California: Flying Fish Press, 2004. Edition of 100. Game components housed in 15.5 x 11.25 x 4.75" cloth-covered box. Includes a letterpress printed game board and a multitude of laser-cut game pieces. Game board opens to 21 x 30". Flying Fish Press: "This new bookwork by Julie Chen is by far the most ambitious and extravagant piece ever to be produced at Flying Fish Press. Personal Paradigms presents a truly interactive experience for the reader in the form of a game that is played and the results then recorded in a collaborative ledger book. The object of the game focuses on the player's own life experience and perceptions at the moment that the game is being played." $2,400	Click image to enlarge


True to Life By Julie Chen Berkeley, California: Flying Fish Press, 2004. Edition of 100. 9.75 x 15" case with tray for book and prop to showcase book. The hinged floor lifts to support the book in an upright position at an angle. Letterpress printed using a combination of pressure plates, woodblocks, and photopolymer plates. The image that appears on each page is one section of a long, continuous visual timeline that can never be viewed all at once. The page shows through a plexiglass window. There are twelve views of the "page" that are accessed by pushing upward on wooden handles. Sections of the next page will slowly slide into view over the previous page. A visual and textual exploration of the vicissitudes of living. It shows life as a continuous process of change as truth, perceptions, memory and re-interpretation liquidly mix to form this sea of life. $1,800




Flying Fish Press Out of Print Titles: • Bon Bon Mots • Domestic Science • Evidence of Compression • Leavings • LifeTime • Listening • Octopus • Ode to a Grand Staircase (For Four Hands) • Radio Silence • Space-Time Geometry • St Ostrich in Manhattan • (In)Versions

The Veil By Julie Chen Berkeley, California: Flying Fish Press, 2001. Edition of 100. 4.25 x 10.5" closed. Opens to a full width of 27 inches when opened for display. The book has magnets imbedded in the covers which allow it to be displayed in a circular, sculptural format. Presented in a sumptuous box with magnetic closure. "The Veil" presents personal reflections inspired by the current political situation in the Middle East and the world. In carousel book format with shaped and intricately cut pages, the story unfolds in a richly beautiful, but strangely disquieting setting. With text and illustration by Julie Chen. (SOLD)

Correspondence Course By Nancy O'Banion Berkeley, California: Flying Fish Press, 1993. Edition of 125. 6.5 x 9". Canson Vidalon, Coventry Rag, and Elephant Hide papers. Typefaces: Gill Sans Condensed & Kaufmann. Card images screen printed by Thomas Wojak. Letterpress printed. In paper-covered slipcase. A feast of text and image, visual and language puns, using cards slipped into pocket pages so that they can be swapped back and forth. Set up in sections as a textbook with divider pages & tabs. Contents: Foreword; Philosophy; World Studies; Household Arts: Transportation; Health Care: Life Science; Social Studies; Afterwords. (SOLD)	Click image to enlarge

Objects / Encounters: Bookworks at Flying Fish Press 1987-2001 By Connell Gallagher and Cynthia Imperatore Burlington: University of Vermont, 2002. 8 x 9"; 48 pages. Catalog design by Julie Chen. Photography by Sibila Savage. Bound by Cardoza James Bindery. Printed by Coast Litho. Letterpress covers designed and printed by Julie Chen. Descriptive essays of Julie Chen's work by Connell Gallagher and Cynthia Imperatore. Features seventeen color images of her books, plus two black-and-white views of the Flying Fish Press studios. Includes a checklist of books. (SOLD)

Page last update: 05.11.12