| Small Plate series bookworks | |
THE RELATIVE VALUE of things 10.5 x 8"; 30 pages. White paper covered boards. Perfect bound. Front board designed with dryer lint or hair. San Francisco Center for the Book: "The Relative Value of Things consists of three projects that investigate the joys, follies, and contradictions of collecting, desire, and valorization. The first project is the books' front covers, each uniquely embellished with encapsulated hair or lint donated by a multitude of individuals. The second is the books' contents, comprised of color images and letterpress-printed lists documenting personal possessions discarded by the artist over time. The third project comprises the back covers, featuring meticulously drawn text that addresses the struggle to find reassurance and meaning amidst life's mysteries and uncertainties." [The back cover is from a project called Someday I Will Be As Insignificant As a Swarm of Summer Insects.] Nigel Poor, 2007 Aperture West Book Prize submission: “The Relative Value of Things is a photographic project that also includes a fair amount of text. I see the text and images as having equal importance. Today the written list numbers over 500 objects and the photographic aspect is a simple sampling of these ‘dumb discarded things.’ The text is small and handwritten, yet large enough to read. Most of the list is written with a black rapidograph, though the words in red signify the items which have been photographed. The photographs are straight ahead images of objects. As one looks at the collection of things and words, threads begin to emerge; patterns and sensibilities can be seen. The objects range from beautiful and mysterious to humble, hopeful, and sad. They are the cast off objects of everyday life given weight by knowing they once reflected something of intrinsic value.” |
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De Rekening 6.75 x 11.5"; 72 pages. Letterpress printed by the artists at the Center for the Book. Bound in Japanese buckram with stamped title. San Francisco Center for the Book: "De Rekening is a work built upon an artist-created system of 'fake writing' used to mark the passing of time. Inspired by the anonymous entries in 19th-century ledgers and account books, De Rekening borrows its form and repetitive structure from those utilitarian yet evocative receptacles of time. The ruled lines in the book were mechanically drawn using a pen ruling machine at Golden Business Forms in West Burlington, Iowa, especially for this edition. Pen ruling was widely used in the 19th and early 20th Century in the ledger and account book trade; Golden Business Forms is one of the last purveyors of this technology." |
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Small Plates Series San Francisco Center for the Book: "We've invited selected artists and writers to create books of a specific size and cohesive theme. For 2008, the books are four inches square and devoted to the theme How-To." |
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One Another This project was inspired by Howard Zinn's Artists in Times of War, and the work of bay area artists Allison Smith & Susan O'Malley." |
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| Sideshow By Rigel Stuhmiller San Francisco, California: San Francisco Center for the Book, 2010. Edition of 100. 4.5 x 4.5"; 45 pages. Double-sided vertical accordion fold book. Three-color letterpress printed. Colophon pastedown. Illustrated wraparound wrapper. San Francisco Center for the Book: "The book follows the rise and fall of a vintage fictional circus. The format of the book, 11 double-sided pages, uses two storytelling channels to mimic the duplicity of a performance. Bright circus poster image on the front side of the page are the show presented to the audience. The back sides of the pages are the behind-the-scenes perspective: newspaper clippings, notes, and various ephemera that tell the story of the lives of the people who create the performance." Rigel Stuhmiller: "Hand-creating a book is a unique process, so I thought it appropriate to try a unique storytelling method. I took inspiration from one of my heroes, statistician Edward Tufte to tell the story of the rise and fall of two circuses using only circus posters and newspaper clippings. ... "The book is formatted in two sections. Showy, multi-color circus posters will be on the front of all the pages. More subtle black-and-white newspaper clippings will be on the back of the pages. These clippings are very important as they give all the details of plot development." Rigel Stuhmiller is a Bay Area artist working in printmaking, illustration, design, and storyboarding. $44 |
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BICHOS DEL CAMPO 4 x 4"; 14 pages. Linoleum cuts. Printed in two colors on Rives Heavyweight 175 gsm. Letterpress printed at Aardvark Letterpress in Los Angeles. Bound in Bhutan Shawa covers at the San Francisco Center for the Book (SFCB). Illustrations, type design and printed by Daniel González. Binding designed by Vi Thuc Ha. Book production coordinated by Rhiannon Alpers with binding assistance of SFCB volunteers and interns. SFCB: "Bichos del Campo is a bestiary of three Mexican folk tales re-told and illustrated by artist Daniel González. "Bichos del Campo translates as Creatures of the Fields. Its introductory text and fables are illustrated in Daniel's signature linoleum block print style, delivering on the mood set in his preface: If there was ever a setting where anything was possible, where the real and imagined can coexist, it would be in the ranchos of my grandparents. At night, the small flicker of the kerosene lamp was the only light for miles in a night filled with sounds. In these adobe homes, I learned that bees pray, snakes steal milk from cows, and some people fly in the shape of owls. "Daniel studied graphic design and printmaking at the California College of the Arts. He currently lives and works in Los Angeles where he served a two-year apprenticeship at La Mano Press before striking out on his own. He draws on his Mexican heritage and bicultural experiences in much of his artwork." |
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god's femur 4.125 x 4"; 30 pages. 15 illustrations. Letterpress printed on a Vandercook 4 press. Paper: Somerset. Typeset: Gill Sans. Handbound in heavyweight illustrated paper cover with cloth spine. Written and illustrated by Ward Schumaker, this is one in the Small Plates series published under the Imprint of the San Francisco Center for the Book. Text designed by Lili Ong and Michael Bartalos. Kafkaesque story of a young artist meeting up with provincial tastes (or perverted minds?) in 1965 Nebraska. Ward Schumaker: "Yes, the story in God's Femur is true—all except the part about the painting being dirty. It wasn't. And isn't. But I was making a book out of the event, a small and short book, so I came up with a different ending. And after all this time and water-under-the-bridge, did I care? Better to look back and laugh." About the writer/artist: "As an illustrator Ward Schumaker’s work has appeared in over 100 magazines, including Poetry, The New Yorker, Le Figaro, Le Monde, Esquire Japan, and the L.A. and N.Y. Times. He has drawn for clients as diverse as Hermès, Neiman Marcus, United Airlines, and SFJazz. He is author/illustrator of three children’s books: Dance; Sing a Song of Circus; and In My Garden. He has illustrated two limited edition letterpress books for the Yolla Bolly Press: Two Kitchens in Provence by M.F.K. Fisher, and Paris France by Gertrude Stein. … He is the creator of many logotypes, including Moose’s Restaurant (San Francisco), Columbus Bakery (New York City) and MosBurger (Tokyo). He has received awards from the AIGA, CA Illustration and Design Annuals, Print Magazine, Graphis, American Illustration, and The Society of Illustrators. His work has been featured in articles in Communication Arts, Print, Step-by-Step, Design Journal (Korea), and Portfolio (Japan). With the Smithsonian Institution, Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum in New York, he received a Federal Design Achievement Award for his work on "Unlimited by Design." |
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RABBITPOX 4 x 4"; 20 pages. Hand set in Century Schoolbook type. Printed on a Vandercook Proof Press. Housed in a handmade lightweight illustrated card box with flap and tab closure. This is the second of four Small Plates editions published in 2009 under the Imprint of the San Francisco Center for the Book. The book production was coordinated by Katherine Case and Pam De Luco with printing and binding assistance of SFCB volunteers. SFCB: "Rabbitpox, written and illustrated by Allison Weiner, casts rabbits as the heroes and the pawns in a tale of biological warfare. The story is inspired by a 2004 Harper's Magazine item describing American scientists as having engineered extra-lethal forms of mousepox, cowpox and, of course, rabbitpox. Allison's book combines text, inventive design, and diagrammatic illustrations with a whole lot of personality to find humor, absurdity, and alarm at the dark extremes of biological science. "Each book is housed in a handmade box and bound with thread spun by Pam [De Luco] from the fur of her pet rabbit Charisma, a white German Angora who reportedly had a show career. "Allison [Weiner] is a Bay Area creative who studied at Stanford University, The San Francisco Art Institute, and the California College of the Arts. Rabbitpox is her first artist's book edition. It is Charisma's first foray into book arts as well." |
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Reparations 4.125 x 4"; 4 leaves. Accordion structure with one continuous illustration. Original painting by the artist printed letterpress in two colors. Wrapper of Amate bank with hand-spun hemp and silk thread. Colophon page tipped to interior of wrapper. Book design by Michael Bartalos and Lili Ong. Emory Douglas: "The content of my Imprint publication deals with the subject of reparations and slavery with each abstract designed figure chained together making up the word, REPARATIONS." San Francisco Center for the Book: "This featured artist, Emory Douglas, is renowned for his iconic representations of the Black Panther Party through his work the Party's Minister of Culture. For decades, he communicated the power and charisma of the movement through his compelling straightforward graphic style. Recently, his work has been celebrated and displayed at the New Museum in New York City, the Museum for Contemporary Art in Los Angeles, as well as in England at the URBIS Exhibition." |
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How Birds Sing 4 x 4"; 9 pages. 6 illustrations. Letterpress printed on a Vandercook 4 press. Heavyweight paper cover and hand-bound. Ryan's 11-line poem (posted in the Central Park Zoo) is here illustrated by Tucker Nichols. Ryan, appointed the Library of Congress’s sixteenth Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry in 2008, was called by Billy Collins "the Fabergé Egg" of poetry. |
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Lyrica 4 x 4"; 24 pages. Letterpress printed. Poet Michael Hannon's list of two-word combinations ("deep window / paper suit / child's hat") are illustrated by Bay Area artist William Wiley's black-and-white line drawings. (Lyrica is a drug for nerve pain, which might help.) |
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| San Francisco Center for the Book Out of Print Title: | |
29 Degrees North 5.4 x 14.6" closed, accordion. Six leaves printed on one side only. San Francisco Center for the Book: "The title of our first publication refers to a degree of latitude shared by six destinations depicted in this artist's travelogue. From west to east, the poem and images progress from Mexico to Morocco, through India on to China, and over to Japan before terminating in Hawaii. Two-color iconic images, printed by Nat Swope at Bloom Screen Printing, Oakland, California, extend over an accordion-fold structure. The binding was designed by John DeMerritt in collaboration with the artist and features a deluxe clamshell box covered in Japanese silk with foil-stamped title and illustration." |
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Gray Matter Gardening 4 x 4"; 23 pages. 23 illustrations. Letterpress printed paper cover. Inkjet images. Handbound. San Francisco Center for the Book: "Nanette Wylde is a conceptual artist and cultural worker with a passion for artists’ books. She is a native of California where she makes her home with one spousal unit, one cat, and an abundance of edible and decorative plant life." Five sections: Create an environment conducive to weeding; Determine what is a weed and what is not a weed; Remove the weeds; Understand the weed; and, Repeat as needed. "Inspiration provided by the Dharma." |
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Restless Dust 7.75 x 9.75 x 3.5" container with book and shadowbox installation. Book: 6.5 x 8.25", 36 pages. Linocut images. Hand set in Cheltentam Old Style. Printed on Rives heavyweight paper. Letterpress printed on a Vandercook press. Bound in leather with leather tie closure. San Francisco Center for the Book: "Wight's text, Restless Dust, invites Charles Darwin's ghost to sail to San Francisco and wander with her through the greater Bay Area terrain. The focus of the journey is three part: to celebrate the unique species of the San Francisco Bay Area; to look at the ways in which Darwin's legacy has impacted contemporary Bay Area culture; and to acknowledge the fragile and endangered state of many of our local flora and fauna caused by environmental degradation. "Artist/author Gail Wight created Restless Dust as a multimedia installation housed in a two-tiered wooden box. The top portion holds a letterpress printed, leather bound artist's book which is separated by Plexiglas from a velvet-lined bottom chamber containing two illuminated paper birds (activated when the box lid is removed). " Gail Wight: "In attempts to understand life, I have: made maps of various nervous systems, practiced art while under hypnosis, conducted biochemical experiments on myself and willing others, executed medical illustrations in black velvet, documented dissections of humans, dissected machines and failed to put most of them back together, removed my teeth to model information systems, translated EEGs into music, painted with slime mold, made music with mice, drawings with bones, and have attempted to create models of my own confused state. "The interplay between art and biology, theories of evolution, cognition and the animal state-of-being form the groundwork for my thoughts. In what ways do we resemble worms? Is a machine more or less reliable due to its lack of endorphins, emotions, and opiate addictions? Can an artist collaborate with other species? What does compassion look like at the neuroanatomical level? "My artwork investigates issues in biology and the history of science and technology. It explores the cultural impact of scientific practice, and our ongoing redefinition of self through epistemological constructions. I try to follow the ways in which these ideologies both metaphysical and manifest travel through time, moving from the scientific to the social sphere, the social to the scientific, and so often become the overlooked of the everyday. " Gail Wight works in experimental media focusing on issues of biology, the history of scientific theory and technology. She is currently Associate Professor at Stanford University Department of Art and Art History and Director of Graduate Studies in Studio Art and Experimental Media Arts. |
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Thumb War 4 x 4"; 36 pages. 27 illustrations. Set in Blockhead unplugged. Letterpress printed in two colors using a Vandercook 4. Hand-bound with wooden boards and cloth spine. Front board laser-cut into finish grade plywood, with a small number of them laser-cut into chipboard. Text: "The ancient sport of thumb war was first recorded with pictograms on ceramics unearthed at Xanadu, the summer court of Kublai Kahn in the 13th century. Though there is earlier mention of a similar game 2000 years previous through buddhist texts where combatants engaged in zhi jue di, or toe wrestling, in a similar fashion. It is believed that Marco Polo brought the game to the West when he returned from his travels. Scholars have conjectured that the game was used to settle differences between rival officers as to who was going to sleep with the most popular concubine versus who was going to have to churn the ayrag in the morning before the great sky god awoke, but no one knows for sure." |
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Page last update: 11.20.11
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