Salient Seedling Press ~ New Mexico

River Reciprocity
By Basia Irland.

A poetic simplicity of text printed against a graceful, swirling backdrop in grey-green and gold-brown hues. In 1996, The Río Grande/Río Bravo virtually disappeared south of Socorro, New Mexico, a victim of drought and mismanagement. River Reciprocity meditates on the fate of the river at the nexus of use and abuse. The text details the impending extinction of the silvery minnow and is set in typographic capsules that flow down the page, mimicking the river's course. The story is told as a first person account of a moment of recognition. The usual suspects are upriver dams, irrigation channels and urban centers that exploit the waters. But the narrator's perspective is one of complexity that goes beyond cause and effect: "Upstream politics are encumbered with a long and complicated history, but the issues evaporate on this scorching highway of arid sand which only last month was a river."

Part lamentation, part meditation, part call to conscience, this book evokes the serenity of nature through linked illustrations. The images were produced using a letterpress technique known as pressure printing, in which various materials were adhered to paper printing plates via matte medium: string delineates the course of the Río Grande/Río Bravo and salt was used to create textured areas representing the bosque and ocean. Printed tamarisk branches (an invasive, red-stemmed, flowering tree which grows profusely along the river) and brush strokes in the gel medium suggest the flow of wind and sand, movement in the terrain. The eight horizontal accordion panels can be read page-by-page or viewed as a continuous print.

Letterpress from handset Bodoni. Accordion panels are glued to and backed with a single sheet of canvas that allows for elegant folds and durability. Bound in linen cloth-over-board covers with an inset silk-tissue title plate and an ink rubbing of the silvery minnow. A linen loop on the first panel allows for hanging display of the fully extended book as print. Housed in a protective paper wrapper. Edition of 50. (16.75 x 6.5 landscape.) 1996. A beautiful evocation and reminder.
$750