Cause and Effect
By Jessica Peterson
Northport, Alabama: Paper Souvenir, 2009. Edition of 55.
5.5 x 8.5"; 30 pages. Letterpress printed on handmade paper using photopolymer plates. Illustrations printed from newspaper and microfilm clippings. Drum leaf binding structure. Bound in paper over boards with cloth spine. Front boards acts as title page; back boar illustrated.
Jessica Peterson: "Cause and Effect is an editioned artists’ book about how racial identity is formed through geography and history. It is an autobiographical story about the connections between a race riot in my hometown, my upbringing, and my racial awareness."
This book was created in as a thesis project for Peterson's MFA in Book Arts from the University of Alabama. The excerpts that follow, from Peterson's thesis, show bookmaking as a process of self-discovery: "Evolution of concept: The goal of my thesis project was to create a well printed, conceptually clear and structurally sound artist book about my race development. In my original thesis proposal I wrote: 'The content of the thesis book will investigate the role race has played in my life both culturally and historically. I want to highlight events that have informed my awareness of race. The project’s text will be a combination of historical facts, newspaper excerpts and autobiographical commentary. These texts will be organized along two dueling chronological narratives that will chart significant race-centered events in places I have lived. The narratives will focus on two distinct time periods: the first, 1830-1960 (United States history from slavery through desegregation); the second, 1976-2008 (my lifetime). I hope that the exploration of my own experience will inspire the readers of the book to consider how race has affected their own cultural and historical development….'
"My original idea was to retrace the history of slavery and racism in the places I frequented while living in Alabama. Since I moved to the South, I have been disturbed and perplexed by the lack of acknowledgement of race-based events, both the atrocities and the positive occurrences. These histories seem to be undiscussed, but deeply buried in memory. While considering these things about the South, I considered my life, to see if there were any race-based events or defining atrocities in any of the places I lived prior to Alabama. Before moving to Alabama, I lived in New York, Chicago, and Maine… all places that in my mind represented emancipation, equality, and desegregation.
"I spoke to many Alabama natives while trying to find the history I was looking for. One of my friends, a Southerner, said to me, 'You know, people always say that the bad stuff only happened down here in the South, but I know that same kind of stuff happened in the north, it’s just that no one talks about it.' To me, at the time, this was a standard thing that a Southerner would say to a Northerner like me who was investigating Southern history. While part of me dismissed what she was saying, I decided it was important to make absolutely sure my own personal history did not contain direction connections to slavery, or any civil rights events. This is when I learned about the race riot in Rochester.
"There wasn’t a single defining moment of discovery. I gradually learned the riot and my connections to it in small snippets of information: civil unrest, a helicopter crash, riots in New York City and Newark. I researched these snippets until I found sources of information about the Rochester riot which were so large and obvious that I couldn’t believe I had never heard about the riot."
$300 |
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Witness, 1956
By Jessica Peterson
Tuscaloosa, Alabama: Paper Souvenir, 2008. Edition of 60.
4.5 x 5.25"; 8 pages. Single sheet in french fold. Letterpress printed. Handmade paper made in the Lost Arch Papermill on the University of Alabama campus. Typeface: Garamond. Sources: The Schoolhouse Door by E. Culpepper Clark; The Tuscaloosa News; and The New York Times.
Jessica Peterson: "This is an abstracted map of the University of Alabama campus, marking the violent protests which took place during the first attempt at racial integration at the school. The only named physical landmark on the map is a live oak tree. The other locations on the map are indicated only by the events that transpired there, and a date. Witness, 1956 is a physical retracing of history, linking the past to the present."
$35
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Ex-Slave
By Jessica Peterson
Tuscaloosa, Alabama: Paper Souvenir, 2008. Edition of 45.
4.5 x 6.5"; 48 pages. The typeface is Centaur. Printed with photopolymer plates on Frankfurt paper. The cover, endsheets and inset papers are dyed with India ink and acrylic paint. Bound in paper covered boards. Designed and printed by artist.
The contents of this book are from taken the Federal Writers' Project Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves. The Writers' project ran from 1936 to 1938 during which over 2,000 interviews of former slaves were conducted. There was a methodology used in the interviews in how to transcribe the vernacular of the former slaves. This book by Jessica Peterson contains two narratives. Amy Chapman and George Young were slaves on the plantation of Governor Reuben Chapman which was located near Livingston, Alabama. In gathering information for this book Peterson found that parts of the original transcript of Amy Chapman's interview were excluded from the official Writers' Project Document. These excerpts have been included in this book and are identified by a thin line along the inside margin.
Besides the two slave narratives Ex-Slave includes a section on the "Documents from the Federal Writers' Project" about Negro Dialect Suggestions; Supplementary Instructions; Twenty Questions for the ex-slaves; and Notes by an editor on dialect.
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