Spaceheater Editions

Spaceheater Editions ~ Arizona (Phil Zimmermann)


Sanctus Sonorensis By Phil Zimmermann Tucson, Arizona: Spaceheater Editions, 2009. Edition 1000. 8.25 x 10.75 x 1.5"; 90 pages. Four-color offset lithography. Gilded edges. Self-covering. Philip Zimmermann: "Four-color offset lithography printed book was created as a series of two page board book spreads that minimize the visual distraction of a 'gutter' on the panoramic view of each skyscape. The edges of the book are rounded and gilded in the fashion of religious breviaries or missals. "This is a book of border beatitudes. This work comments on the complicated attitudes of Americans on illegal immigration from Mexico. The cover shows a photograph of the area of Southern Arizona which is the most active in terms of migration across the Sonoran desert, and where thousands have lost their lives in the deadly desert heat. The interior pages show the progression of a typical high desert day from dawn to sunset with a single line of text on each two page spread." Zimmermann (Blog), March 8, 2010: "In December of 2002, I was driving back into the United States from Mexico through the Lukeville border road entrance. As I was traveling through the Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument just inside Arizona, I was stopped for a couple of hours by several groups of men each consisting of large number of heavily armed Border Patrol agents on some sort of special operations. They eventually lead out of the desert scrub a large number of illegal immigrants that had been hiding in the mesquite and cactus as they attempted to head north through the park. They clearly weren't drug smugglers. They looked too poor and were unarmed. They made for a rather moving and pathetic sight, and looked disheveled and dejected. I had never seen an operation like this up close and it was rather upsetting, and got me thinking about the life these folks were trying to make for themselves and the efforts that we in the United States make to prevent them from coming here. Sanctus Sonorensis was a work that came out of this experience." CJ Mace, review, JAB 27: "With gold-edged pages and title referring directly to a hymn of the Christian liturgy, Phil Zimmermann's book 'Sanctus Sonorensis,' is clear about its associations with the messages within gilded bibles. The main contrast between the structure of these books and Zimmermann's is the weight of the individual pages; while the pages of missals often rattle and are tissue paper-thin, the board-book structure of 'Sanctus Sonorensis' allows for the page and binding to merge into a seamless unit, and the pages turn silently. This silence suggests reverence and the apparent starkness of the Sonoran desert that forms the background photography, a landscape where light becomes sound in a sort of synesthetic radiance. ..." $50	Click image for more


Shelter By Phil Zimmermann Tucson, Arizona: Spaceheater Editions, 2009. Edition of 50. 11.25 x 8.5"; 52 pages. HP Indigo printed on Mohawk Superfine paper. Photographic images on boards with sewn binding. Variation of the floating hinge format creates a book within a book. Phil Zimmermann: "Shelter came out of an exploration of losing faith and questioning on of its opposites: the process of finding religion. This text came out of watching my dying father, who was never religious when I was growing up, become increasingly interested in faith and salvation as he became sicker from heart disease and cancer. I saw the desert with it's unfriendly flora and harsh environment as a metaphor for the difficult world towards the end of many people's lives. The desert is also used in many religious tracts as a place for contemplation and mortification. In this work roadside shelters and gospel ministries were used as signifiers of ways and places where people look (vainly?) to relive prospects of their approaching death." A wondrously complex book aptly suited for the knotty subject of dying (very much different than death and its aftermath). Turn the pages and cloud-laden skies, always with a gray cast, provide framework for an alternating chain of Southwest borderland secular shelters (Wayside Stops or Rest Areas in some parts of the US) and churches clad in the look of evangelism. Text at the bottom of most pages contains the tortured musings of a man with "the inevitable irritability that comes with a body surrendering to age," a man who would like "shelter and comfort: peace" both physical and spiritual. The book structure suggests that the comfort may be difficult or impossible because the beauty of blooming cacti is present but almost impossible to see. The final page contains the last lines from William Cullen Bryant's "Thanatopsis," a wish perhaps from Zimmermann to his father – no promise of an undiscovered country, but solace as a kind of shelter in the last moments on this side of the border. $850	Click image for more


Nature Abhors By Phil Zimmermann Rhinebeck, NY: 2003. Edition of 150. 5.25 x 5.25"; 30 pages in corrugated-paper fold-out box. Construction based on a model developed by Claire van Vliet from a form originally created by Hedi Kyle. Photograph on page six by Elizabeth Alderman. To be read through on one side, then on the reverse. Accordion-folded, each sheet affixed to the next with paper tabs illustrated with segments of spinal vertebrae. Housed in illustrated sleeve numbered by the artist. The whole housed in illustrated cardboard box also numbered by the artist. Signed by the artist. Phil Zimmermann: "In addition to being a great vehicle for communicating directly to an audience, artists' books have the wonderful advantage of being time-based like video and film. Static pictures on a wall seem and impoverished way of making an artistic statement after one works with sequence, rhythm, movement, translucency, narrative arc; the list goes on and on. I know I am biased: I have been in love with books ever since I was a small child, but the medium is so rich with possibilities that it is hard to go back to working any other way.... "My book entitled Nature Abhors is about loss, the inevitable by-product and, (perhaps pessimistically) the final result of love. In the past four years I have had a great deal of loss in my life. This book is a rumination on what loss has meant for me personally and also what I have found has been a more universal feeling of loss since 9.11. It is determinedly not about that disaster but more about the zeitgeist since that world-changing event ......." $375	Click image for more


Spaceheater Editions Out of Print Title: • High Tension

Page last update: 01.18.12