Documenting family |
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Indra's Net 4 x 22" scroll. Housed in a handmade circular tube, which is covered on one end by a tyvek lid with attached glass bead. Silver bell attached to interior of lid. Housing covered with sumingashi marbled silk. Printed on cotton rag paper by an Epson printer. Scroll verso marbled using sumingashi technique. Ribbon tie closure for scroll. "Indra's Net" is a poem by Grace Noble Nettles from the book Corners: Grace and Bea Nettles. Grace Nettles, the bookmaker's mother, died in 2007. She was a teacher and a poet. Bea Nettles: "This new scroll has just been completed in an edition of nine. The tubular boxes were crafted with hand marbled silk and silver tyvek coverings. When the lid is lifted, you will ring a small silver bell. The poem is printed on a spider-web background."
$350 |
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| Work from Nettles' residency at Harfnarborg Cultural Center in Hafnarfjordur, Iceland in the summer of 2007. | |
Foss: The Legendary Waterfalls of Iceland Four hardbound 4 x 3" accordion books, each 8 pages, housed in cloth-covered box with lift-off lid (4 x 3 x 3"). Title on handmade paper on box cover. Signed inside box lid. Prints on Ultra Premium Presentation Paper Matte (10.4 mil thick) using the K3 Ultrachrome 8 color ink system. Opened books are 20" long. Lionel Suntop: "This mossy [colored] boxed set contains accordion books featuring four waterfalls that cascade out of the viewer’s hand. The text relates their stories and geographical facts. All of the photographs were taken by Bea Nettles in Iceland in the summer of 2007." The four falls: Barnafoss (Children's Falls); Godafoss (Gods' Falls); Gullfoss (Golden Falls); and Skógafoss (Forest Falls). |
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Four Guardians 6 x 6" closed; 18.25 x 19" open. Bound on four sides so that pages open out into a cross format. Images Epson color prints on Epson lustre photo paper. Map, a lazer cut image of Iceland with the four sites marked by gold-leafed stars. Bound in Black Rayon book cloth. Slipcased, signed, and numbered. This book was made while Nettles was in residence at Harfnäborg Cultural Center in Hafnärfjordur, Iceland. All photographs taken by Bea Nettles in Iceland (summer 2007). The text is a translation (from the original Old Norse) of Heimskringla: Norwegian Kings (Volume 3, Chapter 37) by Snorri Sturluson. Bea Nettles: "This book shows the mythical journey of the warlock, in the form of a whale, who circled Iceland to spy for Kind Harald of Norway. At every cardinal direction he was blocked by a guardian: Dragon, Eagle, Bull and Giant. These four beings are found on the back of every Icelandic krona." |
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Photographic Book Works Thirteen titles of Nettles’ work, shipping included:
$180 |
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Seasonal Turns: Four accordion booklets, each 3.5 x 3.5", 24.5" extended. 56 duotones. Housed in 4.5 x 4.5" plastic box. The passing of the seasons is represented by strips of sequenced photographs folded into four accordion books. Each book is printed in a different color, combining evocative landscapes and portraits. Journal of Artist's Books, Fall 1999:"One after another, the images emphasize qualities in each other as the reader moves from one juxtaposed pair to another. The sense of continuity that is created has to do with the skill of Nettles's sequencing, the way she reigns in the multiple levels of photographic meaning enough to anchor the viewer's experience in connections from one image to another. The full effect of the photographs escapes these links, of course, allowing them their more expansive resonance as memory fragments and personal records." |
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The Skirted Garden: 20 Years of Images 8.5 x 11"; 48 pages. Halftones. Softbound. Major themes in Bea Nettles' work were celebrated in 1990 with the production of this retrospective book. It is a helpful supplement to her other works. From the Conclusion of The Skirted Garden: “I chose to name this book primarily after a painting by the same name done over 20 years ago... I would also like to speak to the importance of the garden in my own life. I am a gardener, as are my parents. It is not surprising that working with plants is an activity I require. I also love to share starts of plants with others. This gives me the greatest pleasure. Perhaps it contributes to my desire for immortality, but when people tell me they think of me when they see a plant I gave them doing well in their yard I feel great. There are some parallels to making art and tending one’s garden, but again sharing is a key activity. It is reassuring to think that sometimes something that I have nurtured and grown (and here I mean an idea or an image) can be split up, shared, and even better yet transplanted into someone else’s backyard.” |
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A is for Applebiting Alligators 4.125 x 5.125"; 26 pages. Codex, staple bound, lavender paper cover. Housed in fake alligator slipcase machine stitched. Offset printed in black with lavender silkscreen additions. Printed at the Visual Studies Workshop. An alphabet book by Bea Nettles comprised of photo montages and drawings. "Z for Zillions of Zooming Zebras" $400 (Last Copy) |
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Swamp Lady 3.25 x 4.25"; 29 cards. Experimental four color printing done on a small offset press by Bea Nettles. This work first appeared in Colors: An Offset Portfolio, published by Florida State University. Deck is encased in a white box with Swamp Lady label and consists of pairs of images including Gator, Palm, Dive, Snorkle, and Beach. Cards are varnished on both sides and corners are rounded. Bea Nettles: "A variation on the card game Old Maid. Dealer shuffles and deals the cards. Players look at their cards and put any pairs face up on the table. The dealer starts the play by offering his hand, face down to the player on his left, who picks any card. If this makes a pair, put it down face up. That player then offers his hand to the next. The player left with the SL card is the SWAMP LADY!" |
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| In 1970, Nettles began her photographic interpretation of the Tarot Cards. After five years of work she produced the Mountain Dream Tarot, which is now out of print. In 1990 she published another work based on the Tarot: Knights of Assisi: A Journey Through the Tarot. In 2001 she created a digital version of Mountain Dream Tarot. | |
Mountain Dream Tarot 4 x 5.25"; 78 cards boxed. Duotones with each suit a different color. Unnumbered edition. Inky Press: "In 1970, photographer Bea Nettles began her photographic interpretation of the Tarot Cards. After five years of work she produced the historic Mountain Dream Tarot, [one of the first photographic tarot decks ever] which has been out of print for many years…. "In 2001 she created a digital version of Mountain Dream Tarot.This is the second edition of this set of Tarot Cards. They were scanned from the original photographic prints made in the 70s and brought up to date digitally. The backs of the cards have new designs by Gavin Suntop. "The cards are a complex collection of visual information, combining mythology, numerology, astrology and archetypal images. This is a recently released edition, updated for a new generation." |
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knights of assisi: 8.5 x 8.5" square; 24 pages. Seventeen full color plates. Softbound with full color dust jacket. Decorative end papers with the look and feel of the pink rock walls of Italy. Shot on location in Assissi, Italy, this book features hand-colored portraits based upon the male characters in a deck of Tarot cards. From the introduction: “These images work on many levels and provide a rich resource for contemplation. The broadest range of human personality is symbolized by these suits from the aggressive/intellectual swords to the passive/emotional cups. It was this range I wished to portray and I had the opportunity to travel to Italy to find the proper site. From a distance I read about the hill town of Assisi with its pink stone fortresses and St Francis’s Basilica. The town rises like a vision from the flat fertile fields. There one finds ancient manifestations of the military, agricultural, mercantile, and spiritual activities upon which the respective suits of swords, wands, pentacles and cups were based. I was thrilled as I climbed up the narrow streets and rounded the bend to see the fortress which matched my sketch for the cover image. It was a dream realized.” |
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| Documenting family has been a consistent activity throughout Nettles'work. | |
14 Mysteries 3.75 x 2 x .75" closed; extends to 17"; 4 pages. Accordion book. Printed on Epson Ultra Premium Presentation Paper Luster 10.4 mil thick using the K3 Ultrachrome 8-color ink system. Leather cover with embedded key. Slipcase with letterpress title. Bea Nettles: "14 Mysteries is an accordion book that features the keys that were found years ago in our home when we moved to Illinois." iText which runs along the bottom edge underneath the images of the keys: "These keys were found in a cluster when we moved here in 1984. Their purposes have long been forgotten. After twenty two years they hang on a hook in the basement. No one has the heart to just throw them away. One never knows when their role in our house will be revealed." |
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Rachel's Holidays 7.5 x 7.75 "; 32 pages including free end pages. 15 color images scanned from the original color negatives printed using an Epson 4800 printer. Printed on cotton rag paper. Housed in lightweight paper slipcase in Christmas colors. Bound in red leather with paper title on cover. Exposed stab binding with three green leather accent strips entwined horizontally. Bea Nettles, Colophon: "I printed six sets of the images in this book in 1984 using the dye transfer process. Dye transfer printing was complicated, but worth the trouble, as it was considered one of the most permanent color printing methods. The method was discontinued with the advent of digital photography. Materials for this process no longer exist." From the introduction: "This sequence draws upon the events in my daughter Rachel's life during the 'holiday' season from Halloween through Christmas in 1983. That Thanksgiving, our family traveled to Sanibel Island, Florida, a place justifiably famous for outstanding shelling. Her memories of that trip, and the events and traditions associated with the fall and winter holiday season are the basis for the images which begin and end with Rachel lost in thought in Sanibel." |
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Family Resemblance: 5.5 x 7.5"; 57 pages. Codex grey-green cloth bound, grey end sheets. Signed inside front. Over 75 family photos, predominately black-and-white. Includes index of photos with dates and locations. Bea Nettles: "My Grandmother Noble gave me my first camera when I was ten years old. She didn't purchase it, but had received it as a bonus of some sort. It was red plastic and took wide roll film. This was in 1956, so 2006 marks the fiftieth year that I have been making portraits of my family in Florida. Photography today is so easy and cheap that it is ubiquitous. Huge quantities of pictures are created, looked at, then deleted. In the fifties, film was expensive and I can remember planning and taking almost every shot. I still have all the negatives." |
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Memory Loss 8 x 8" square; 64 pages. Softbound. Halftones. Designed directly on the computer by scanning images and placing them with the stories. The companion book to Nettles' Grace's Daughter. From the Introduction: “This collection of family history and images dates back to the Civil War and the beginnings of photography. My father’s grandparents, the Nettles and Haleys, helped to establish the small town of Palmetto, Florida, after the Civil War. My mother’s family moved to Florida before the Depression. These stories are drawn from a variety of sources: a Civil War journal, my grandfather Noble’s three year diary from the ‘20s and the genealogical notes and extensive autobiography written by my father Victor Nettles.” |
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Grace's Daughter 7.75 x 8"; 48 pages. Softbound, laminated. This book presents a collection of family stories: "The Passage of the Ruby Ring," “Indian Oaks,” “Growing My Hair Long," “My Own Backyard,” "Travels from Home," "Goiter,” and "A New Home." It was produced entirely on the computer from snapshots and manipulated photographs and printed in mauve and black inks on acid free paper. From the Introduction: “Recently my father shipped me the rest of the family negatives. It is a fine collection, dating back to his parents’ courtship in late nineteenth century Florida. Looking through them reinforced a strong interest that I have in family stories and heredity. Memory and autobiography have always played a role in my art work but the intensity of my backward gaze is stronger than ever. I suppose this has been brought on by the advancing age of my parents and my own realization that I have passed my life’s midway point...” |
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Flamingo in the Dark 11 x 11" square; 72 pages. Full color plates. Hardbound with an illustrated jacket. Inky Press: "A visual autobiography containing over sixty five bichromate images created in multi layered color, predating digitally manipulated photographs by years. All images were produced from 1976 - 1979 using a Kwik Print on vinyl. This process involves coating light sensitive color onto a vinyl base, contact printing large negatives with a bright light source and washing away the unexposed color with water. The images were built up with multiple negatives and many exposures.” Bea Nettles, from the Introduction: “This book is my visual autobiography, starting with my girlhood in Florida and starting over again with my daughter Rachel’s first year. The work is loosely sequenced and includes portraits of myself and family and landscapes pieced together from memories.” Shelley Rice, Art in America (June 1978): “These images float freely across the picture, defying gravity and ignoring normal space and scale with Surrealist-influenced irrationality. Figures loom large over landscapes and turn into angels; the moon beams at the earth with a smiling face and then becomes a dish or a clock. Folds of patterned cloth sprawl into mountains capes while translucent fish swim through rainbows in the night sky. The artist’s visions come alive against backdrops of purples, greens, blues, mauve pinks, amber, browns....Emotionally charged and deeply subjective, Nettles’ colors are equivalents for a reality perceivable only by the inner eye.” |
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| Another area of explorations has been in the themes of women's issues - a woman's strength and ways of knowing about the world. | |
The Passage of the Ruby Ring 5.5 x 8.25 x 5" closed; extends to 55"; 10 pages. Single-sided accordion book with verso in hand-marbled papers. Epson prints on heavy Hahnemühle cotton rag paper. Clothbound boards with paper title label on front board. Hand marbled slipcase with spine and edges in gold paper. Bea Nettles: "This book tells the story of the passage of a ruby and diamond ring through five generations of Nettles' matrilinear line. The women's talents and personalities, as well as certain keepsakes, are featured with a discussion of fertility as symbolized by the red ruby." Closing statement of Ruby Ring: "What can women give their daughters since it isn't customary to give them their family names? If we are remembered for long, it is through stories, our talents, treasured objects passed down, and sometimes by our first names." |
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Hair Loss 4 x 5.5" closed; 4 x 68" opened; 13 pages. Leather bound with slipcase. Accordion structure. Printed on acid free paper with inkjet printer. End sheets of abaca paper with embedded hair. The artist discovered in August 2002 that she had infiltrating ductal Hair Loss is a pictorial account of Bea Nettles' passage through |
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28 Days: 3.5 x 4.5"; 28 cards. Boxed. Duotones. This is the second edition of 28 Days, originally published in 1991. Bea Nettles: "These 28 cards represent some of the emotions and physical sensations of the menstrual cycle. Medical text is intermixed with the artist’s personal statements about her cycle. They are a blend of mystery, honesty, and humor, presented with the hope that they can open discussion on this universal, but practically invisible female experience. The ideal presentation is to lay them out in a circle on a round table. In this way the transition from Day 28 to Day 1 of the following cycle is continuous, as it is in real life...a familiar spiral that continues for women for perhaps 40 years." |
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Complexities 10 x 10" square; 48 pages. Softbound. Duotones. To untangle and examine the complex ties that bind many mothers, Nettles blends her experiences of childhood, education, pregnancy, childbirth, housework, and professional life. In this book's layered images and text she demonstrated how she uses intrusions, improvisation, and balancing as the basis for her art, and art that is tightly woven with her life. From the Introduction: “All mothers are ‘working mothers.’ I belong to the majority of American women who also happen to work outside of their homes. For twenty-two years I have been an artist and college professor. What I do involves balancing priorities and making compromises. I function despite frequent interruptions, piecing things together in patches of time. My roles as artist, teacher, and mother can at times enhance each other, at times compete.” |
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Life's Lessons: 8.5 x 11"; 68 pages. Duotones. Softbound. Claire Wolf Krantz, New Art Examiner, April 1992: “...most moving as psychological document. Nettles wishes to be clear about her intent; thus her photographs are far more documentary than her earlier work and her texts are presented clearly and unambiguously. Yet, her own fears about the world surface as they are projected onto her childrens’ lives and images, and her disapproval of aspects of her environment becomes the source of tension in her pictures. Thus, her art expands beyond the documentary into an expressive photographic journey, as she struggles to live and to make art out of that life.” |
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Corners: Grace and Bea Nettles 8.5 x 8.5" square; 102 pages. Halftones in two colors. Softbound. Corners is the fourth in a series done in the emblem book tradition, a combining pictures (originally woodcuts or engravings) and text. Picture and text were equally important in pointing to some general moral lesson. Here the pictures are Bea Nettles’ photography paired with her mother’s poetry. From the Introduction: “I selected the poetry and sequenced it according to the archetypal four corners, seasons, or ages. This square book is named after the poem by the same name. The book begins in the spring with Grace’s ‘The Dream that Started it All Again’ with its search for memories of her childhood....By summer there are roses and poems of the many forms of love (for her brother, husband, sons and daughters). Memorable images of heartbreak/forgetting and trust/loyalty." |
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| A recurring theme in Nettles' work concerns age and self. | |
60 Old Trees 4.25 x 5.25"; 60 pages. Black-and-white photographs of trees from all over the United States. Clothbound with title label inset on front board. Printed on a laser printer. Created in celebration of Nettles' 60th birthday.
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The Observer: My Constant Companion 3 x 5"; 10 pages. Offset printed with Duotones and varnish on acid free 120lb cover stock. Spiral bound. In April 2005, Bea Nettles was the von Hess Visiting Artist at the Borowsky Center for Publication Arts at the University of the Arts in Philadelphia. With the help of the staff and graduate students, she created The Observer during this residency. In this palm-sized book Nettles has arranged chronologically pictures of herself from her five decades, from a girl of ten to a woman in her fifties. The eyes are cut out so that the spreads display the, say, 20-something face with on the left young eyes, on the right old eyes, then the 30-something face with young and old eyes….. A humorous, jarring, thought-provoking study of the aging process. |
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Turning 50 4 x 8"; 64 pages. Duotones, softbound on acid free stock. Muted but moving collection of 60+ photographs and musing observations by Bea Nettles addressing the female body, aging, journeys, strength, loss and gain. Out of print for several years, the original press sheets have been bound in a new cover commemorating the tenth anniversary of this book's publication.
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| One of a kind pieces from Bea Nettles. | |
Flow 4 x 8"; 8 pages. Perfect bound with collage. Flow is a sea of blue, yellow, and beige.
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Island Map 4 x 8"; 8 pages. Perfect bound with leather spine. Collage and etching. Bea Nettles is probably best known for her photographic work. Few people may know she grew up in Florida. The influence of those early years — beach, sand, ocean, and light — shows up in some of her recent one-of-a-kind work. Island Map suggests green islands and sandy marshes.
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Page last update: 04.25.08
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