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| Catalogue of Charles Hobson bookworks | |
| Nelson & Emma: Aphrodite & Ares Contemplate Admiral Nelson & Lady Hamilton |
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By Charles Hobson 10.5 x 11.5 x 1"; 41 pages. Text and design by Charles Hobson. Frontispiece of two-layer monotype portraits of Admiral Nelson and Emma Hamilton which have been reproduced as high resolution digital prints on transparent film. The cover and slipcase have been covered in mouldmade paper called Canal made in Quebec that has been embossed with a pattern of netting for the slipcase. Book with five signatures called "intermezzos" attached to a concertina spine. Each intermezzo has a unique abstract acrylic painting on paper; an image of an historic sea battle printed on transparent film; a Renaissance-era painting of Aphrodite colored with acrylic wash; and a page with cutout windows. Includes a pop-up square-rigged vessel containing the images of Admiral Nelson and Aphrodite. Prospectus: "In 1798 Admiral Nelson led a fleet of British warships against the French at the mouth of the Nile and achieved a spectacular victory. Several weeks later he sailed into Naples harbor and was greeted with a huge celebration and the rapturous admiration of the citizens, including Lady Emma Hamilton, the young British Ambassador's beautiful young wife. They soon became lovers. "In Greek mythology Aphrodite, goddess of love, and Ares, god of war, had a tempestuous affair, which resulted in ridicule and embarrassment. Nelson & Emma records an imaginary conversation between Aphrodite and Ares about the admiral and the ambassador's wife, mortals who seem to embody the qualities of love and war that are the special purview of the two gods. As the conversation between the two gods proceeds they pull strings that lead to a net of disapproval and scandal being thrown over Nelson and Emma. "At the heart of the design of Nelson & Emma is an intention to show alternative perspectives about the events that transpired and to give life to the odd coincidence that love and war are tied closely together in both the affairs of the gods and the affairs of mortals. "The cover contains a lenticular photograph of an age-of-sail battle scene combined with a painting of Aphrodite by Titian. The goddess looms over the battle. (A lenticular photograph contains two images on beveled horizontal indentations which allows the viewer to tilt the book and shift between the two images.) The slipcase has been made with paper embossed with netting a reference to the net which ensnares Aphrodite and Ares and which, metaphorically, falls over Nelson and Emma." |
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red thread, two women 8 x 8.5 x 2.5" closed; extends to 6'; 36 pages. Constructed with two signatures sewn into an accordion structure incorporating hand-colored cotton and jute twine. Bound in boards. Housed in a fabric covered slip case made by John DeMerritt. Charles Hobson designed and assembled the book with the assistance of Alice Shaw. Pacific Editions: “A rhythmic, flowing collaborative poem, exploring human insight, discovery and personal growth…. “The poets, Paula Sager and Lizbeth Hamlin, are practitioners and teachers of Authentic Movement, a practice that is concerned with the exploration of relationship. In its simplest form there is a mover and a witness. The mover, with eyes closed, waits for an impulse to move. The witness follows or tracks his or her own experience while being present and attentive to the mover. "The design of the book has been inspired by the poem and evokes the experience imbedded in the writing. The string/thread acts like a drawn line and can be moved around by the reader to change the ‘drawing’ and the experience. “The reverse of the book uses images of beets, accentuating characteristics of the poem – their string-like roots and the fullness and ripeness of their shape. The back pages also carry and emphasize individual words from the poem: voice, awaken, heart, distance, silence, tears, flame, breath, birth.” The poets (from the afterword): “red thread, two women is an intimate exploration of insight, discovery and personal revelations. Our dream has always been that our connection can be felt as a familiar truth, showing how we as human beings long to relate. “We are two women who met in the fall of 1999 and discovered that we shared an interest in the relationship between language and the moving body.... “The writing you see here came during our first year of developing this long-distance moving/witnessing relationship. For the most part, it is in chronological order. Sometimes the poem on a page is consistently one voice, sometimes our two voices speak to each other in one poem, and other times the two voices are woven together and become one voice. “Writing in the first person kept it simple, close to the actual experience and to the body. We wrote immediately after the movement. The act of writing because an opportunity to re-experience and discover the language that articulates gesture, feeling and image. The process of moving and writing was completely dependent on our own individual sense of timing. Eventually, we came to realize that the emergence of the material seemed to have a momentum all its own. “It was this relationship of mover and witness that became, for us, the vehicle to explore questions about language, body and consciousness. What made the process even more intriguing was that we moved and witnessed in relationship to each other from a distance of 3,000 miles. The text…has taken shape through this process of internalizing an unseen distant witness.” Charles Hobson has, once again, married form and structure. |
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The Mappist 11 x 10 x 1.25" Printed letterpress. Concertina binding using original USGS maps. Bound in board covers wrapped with a map of Bogotá from 1911. Slipcase covered with wood grain paper and metal label holder. Each book has been assembled using original USGS maps for the concertina binding and selected pages. The cover has been wrapped with a reproduction of a 1911 map of Bogotá from the collection of the Library of Congress. Images of hands emulating gestures of a map maker at work have been reproduced as digital pigment prints on transparent film. The slipcase has been covered with wood-grained paper to suggest the map cabinet which plays a pivotal role in the story. A metal label holder acts as a spine label. The concertina binding, when looked at from the edge, takes on its own topography of mountains and valleys. Landscape images and an image of pencils from the writing desk of Barry Lopez have been created as monotypes with pastel and printed as digital pigment prints. The text has been printed letterpress by Les Ferriss on BFK Rives using a Garamond Narrow typeface. John DeMerritt made the slipcase and board covers with the assistance of Kris Langan. The book design and images have been created by Charles Hobson who assembled the book with the assistance of Alice Shaw. "When I was an undergraduate at Brown I came across a book called The City of Ascensions, about Bogotá. I knew nothing of Bogotá, but I felt the author had captured its essence. My view was that Onesimo Peña had not written a travel book but a work about the soul of Bogotá." With these words Barry Lopez opens his short story about his narrator's life long quest to find a reclusive master mapmaker. The narrator, Phillip Trevino, comes to understand that the Bogotá book and six other extraordinary travel books all purportedly written by different authors are in fact written by the same man.Trevino has become a respected and successful geographer and urban planner living in Boston, but has never given up his search for the genius behind the books which have become a touchstone for his own work and world view. In recent years the trail has grown very cold. His hopes are revived in a book store in Tokyo when he finds a set of elegant hand drawn maps in a in a map cabinet - all unmistakably by the author of the books – and all signed: Corlis Benefideo. Like a great detective, Trevino follows the barest of clues and manages to locate Benefideo who invites him to North Dakota for a visit. Benefideo is now a man in his late eighties living alone on the outskirts of a small town. Late in the evening he shows Trevino his latest maps. The satisfaction of the meeting to Trevino is compounded by the exchange of understanding between the men. They part with a gesture which represents a handing off from one generation to the next of the value of a passionately followed path, one which is followed with authenticity and conviction. [from the prospectus] |
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Poems from the Heart: 4.5 x 5.5" Hand-sewn into a painted cover and mounted in a folded corrugated folder. It contains digital pigment prints from an Epson 2200 printer which portray the printed books and poems used on the heart sculpture. POEMS FROM THE HEART by Charles Hobson is one of 130 large sculptural hearts created by artists to support the San Francisco General Hospital and is located on the mezzanine of the main entrance of the San Francisco Public Library, 100 Larkin Street, San Francisco. Organized by a group of dedicated volunteers, the project placed the hearts around San Francisco in the summer months of 2004. POEMS FROM THE HEART is also a hand-made artist's book picturing the heart sculpture with the eighteen poems by children about love and the heart. Sales of the book benefit the San Francisco General Hospital through its "Hearts in San Francisco" project. The poems have been used with the kind permission of the poets which have been made available through the California Poets in the Schools.
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The Writer 12 x 12 x 1.25" A two part limited edition artist's book housed in a clam-shell box. Part One printed letterpress on BFK Rives with interleaved vellum pigment prints. Cut-outs and pastel monotype reproduced as a pigment print with hand coloring. Part Two printed as a flutter book with reproduced cutouts using hand painted paper and select words from the poem. Inspired by Richard Wilbur's warm and gentle poem conveying a parent's respect and love for his child as she begins the voyage into adulthood. |
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Quartet: Four essays 8.25 x 12". Housed in a drop leaf box with an additional etching in folder. The four essays by Thomas are each illustrated with a color etching by Joseph Goldyne.
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The Unknown Masterpiece 18 x 12.5" Bound in quarter leather with chemise. A new translation of the Honore de Balzac story illustrated with six soft ground etchings with engraving and six photolithographs by Larry Thomas.
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3 Kisses Made from found postcards, translucent envelopes, various papers and features the photographs of Robert Doisneau. A pastel monotype by Charles Hobson has been reproduced as a digital pigment print with hand coloring and is included as the penultimate image in the book. Black paper covered boards with red cloth spine. A large edition for Charles Hobson -and (relatively) affordable.
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Parisian Encounters 11 x 6" with 42 unnumbered pages. French door format book with monotype/pastel portraits. Published as a trade edition by Chronicle Books. Signed by artist. This book uses a "French door" binding to tell about the relationships of eight famous couples who met in Paris. It includes pastel/monotype portraits of each couple, eccentric biographies and maps of Paris showing the spot where each couple met. |
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| Catalogue of Charles Hobson bookworks | |
Why I Love Books: 7x 7”; 56 pages. Includes over 70 color plates and excerpts from the books with images and designs by the artist. Catalogue of the exhibition at the Bolinas Museum, Bolinas, California (September 21-November 17, 2002). Written by Hobson, with an introduction by Barry Lopez. The artist guides us sequentially through his bookworks, from 1984 to 2001, offering insights into his inspirations. |
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Pacific Editions Out of Print Title: |
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Page last update: 05.18.08
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