Bukowski illustrated bookworks |
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| Fred Hagstrom: "When I started taking groups to Australia and New Zealand I learned a great deal by looking at Maori and aboriginal art. I was trained as a formalist, but I was always interested in the narrative behind visual work. For years I worked in a figurative style, using figures as a kind of visual theater. But then I saw work in Australia and New Zealand that was abstract, but still told a clear story. In fact the clarity of it was even greater to me because of its abstract qualities. My epiphany came in a Maori meeting house, looking at ceiling designs. In abstract swirls they told a clear story of the house and the generations that had lived in that valley for centuries. I know that I read it right. I was not just reading into it. | |
Kill Box 12.5 x 15.5 x 2"; 22 pages. Text in Veranda printed from polymer plates. Intaglio images printed chine-collé by plastic plates and letterpress. Paper is BFK Rives, gray, with Iwaki for the chine-collé paper. Bound in black cloth with tipped on image on front board. Housed in a black plywood box. Fred Hagstrom: "Text is by Joanna Rawson. Her poem is about a group of men trying to cross the border who die when they are sealed in a shipping container. I tried to use design and images to convey the claustrophobic sense of her words." This is the first publication of Rawson's poem. |
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your life in two's 4.25 x 4.5"; 24 pages. Intaglio,chine-collé, letterpress. Text and images by Fred Hagstrom. Numbered but unsigned. Fred Hagstrom: "This is a small book and short text about the rhythm of breathing in our lives." Text excerpt:
$250
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| Collaborations with Greg Hewitt - poetry and printmaking. | |
His Small Self Constant, Variable 11 x 13"; 18 pages. Intaglio images from plastic plate in three colors. Text printed letterpress from polymer plates. Base paper Rives Gray. Images applied chine collé on Iwaki paper. Codex binding. Black cloth covered boards with intaglio print on front board. Poetry by Greg Hewett; 10 images by Fred Hagstrom.
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Echo 11 x 10"; 15 pages. Text printed letterpress from polymer plates. Intaglio images printed in three colors from plastic plates on full page. Codex binding. Cloth-covered boards with print on front board. Printing assistants: Megan Fitz and Paloma Barhaugh-Bordas.
$600 (4 copies remaining) |
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First Light 7.75 x 12"; 30 pages.16 block prints (relief engraved images) printed in silver from plastic plates by Fred Hagstrom. The prints are produced with a technique like wood engraving, but done on polystyrene, a hard plastic, rather than word. Hagstrom was "one of the first to promote use of plastic for engraving." The images are carved into the plastic with engraving tools — a burin and half-tone rake. Text printed from set type in brown ink. Printed on handmade paper. Bound in black paper covered illustrated boards with black cloth spine. Cover relief printed from etched copper plate (the lines that would be black in an intaglio print are white and the surface or raised portion is white) with 2.5 x 3" block print image tipped on front board. Codex binding with hard cover and black cloth spine. Printing, binding, papermaking by Molly Kent and Jesse Trentadue. Two poems by Greg Hewett with image by Hagstrom: "Five Appearances of the Noumenon" and "Night-Blooming Cereus."
$350 (a few copies remaining) |
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Junked 9.5 x 6.25"; 24 pages. Full-page images printed intaglio in three colors from plastic plates by Fred Hagstrom on BFK Rives. Text letterpress from handset type. Signature hardcover binding. Bound in maroon cloth covered boards with intaglio image on front board. Printing assistance by Molly Kent. Poem by Greg Hewett accompanied with images by Fred Hagstrom. Fred Hagstrom: "Greg and I discuss the basic theme of each next book, then work fairly independently before I try to connect images to words in an appropriate manner."
$400 (4 copies remaining) |
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| Charles Bukowski (1920 - 1994) poet, novelist, and short story writer. Selected writings illustrated by Fred Hagstrom. | |
Can't Win 15.5 x 22"; 24 unnumbered pages. Twelve large format woodcut images printed in three colors. Text printed in silkscreen. Font: Corbel. Images and text design by Fred Hagstrom. Bound in cloth-covered boards with a woodcut (9.5" tall) that spans the middle of both front and back boards. Fred Hagstrom: "This book uses the text of a single poem by Charles Bukowski 'Lost.' Single lines of the poem are paired with large portrait heads that are carved in a rough drawing style. The intent was to emphasize the stark quality of the text. "The poem is about a general sense of frustration and lack of power, but it is impossible to read it in our current context without thinking about issues such as our current wars. That might be our military wars, our war on drugs, or any of our collective endeavors that seem to be bound up in such a sense of frustration or futility. I am sure one could also read it as a sense of personal futility as well, but for some reason it evoked in me a stronger impression of those public struggles that seem to go on with little hope of resolution." Hagstrom has transformed 'Lost' into 'Can't Win.' The move from description of circumstances to expression of futility is telling. Charles Bukowski (1920 - 1994) poet, novelist, and short story writer. "Lost" is a selection from Burning in Water, Drowning in Flame: Selected Poems 1955 - 1973 by Charles Bukowski, reprinted here by permission of Harper Collins. |
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So many many 11 x 14.5"; 40 pages. Printed letterpress from polymer plates. Five intaglio images in three colors by Fred Hagstrom and five intaglio images in two colors by Graham Fransella (Melbourne, Australia). Codex binding in maroon cloth with detail from a Fransella intaglio image on front cover. Fred Hagstrom: "This book is based on a poem by Charles Bukowski, used with permission. The poem is about a sort of vacant feeling as we look around us at people we run into every day, and we tried to use images that helped to convey that feeling. The collaboration with an Australian artist came about due to my leading student trips to Australia and New Zealand every two years.... "The thing that has always mattered to me in art is narrative. In the past, I thought that telling a story required a kind of visual theater that used figures as the players. I now think that this was a narrow definition of narrative. In the art of indigenous people (Maori carving and aboriginal art from Australia) I have found a whole new way to think about a visual story. I see similar examples from different parts of the world such as Buddhist or Islamic art. Things that appear to be abstract can actually be a very specific, poetic narrative. You can learn to read these stories, and following the often difficult path of this reading can lead to a powerful kind of understanding. I have had only glimpses of this." |
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Page last update: 09.18.09
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