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Triangular
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| Glimpse By Julie Chen and Barb Tetenbaum Berkeley, California / Portland, Oregon: Triangular Press / Flying Fish Press, 2011. Edition of 100. 8.125 x 11.25 x 1.25"; 15 sleeves, 15 cards. Printed letterpress from handset type, wire, antique news cuts, dingbats, and photopolymer plates. Pages formed by envelope sleeves open ended on right. Each sleeve with miniature square window cutouts, and no sleeve with the same cutout pattern. In the form of a tablet with overlapping staggered 7.5 x 3.5" pages. Sleeve enclosure is attached to box of cloth-covered boards with title tipped on front. Signed by both artists. Triangular Press / Flying Fish Press: "Working together again after almost a decade (Ode to a Grand Staircase, 2001), Glimpse is a new collaboration between Barb Tetenbaum and Julie Chen inspired by a conversation about how a person translates their life experience into a narrative form: prominent events may stand out as the nameable moments, yet it is the space between these events that life, in fact, is lived. "The mid-century photo album structure contains text written by Chen, examining this question. Her text is printed on both surfaces of each of the 15 hinged sleeves. Windows in the sleeves reveal small glimpses of the pull-out cards, each written and printed by Tetenbaum and containing dates and events of the non-important moments of her life. These texts are supported by diagrams, grids, and mundane imagery." Working together again after almost a decade (Ode to a Grand Staircase, 2001), two divas of the book arts world present a life lesson elegantly – as expected – and precisely – which is not quite a red herring, but at least pinkish. Glimpse contrasts the series of discrete events we use to define ourselves and the unexamined "spaces between events … when much of life is actually lived." The suggestion is that we should pay more attention to those in between times ("waiting for something else" times, perhaps, in John Lennon's terms). If we want certainty, as the precision of the books surface design seems to suggest is possible, we'll be disappointed, as the subtext – both in design and text – suggests. The glimpses provided by the book – through the windows in each sleeve – don't offer much with which to construct a human being, or even suggest at the woman/women behind them. If you pull out the cards, note the precise date and time, take in the fragmentary description of an event, make yourself aware of the stylized antique news cuts laden with stereotypes and implied significance – what do you have? What remains is the sense of something significant in the artifact and its implied significance. Perhaps the lesson is that we shouldn't be suborned by the obvious; it's always too scant, too easily misconstrued by our own desire for self-myth. It's part and parcel of Yeats' observation: We still can't tell the dancer from the dance, the water from the wave. We are. And some can make art. It's a glimpse of what we should cherish. $975 |
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Specimen Book
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Emptiness is Not Nothing Die Leere ist nicht Nichts a guide to Heidegger's essay from 1969 Art and Space / Kunst und Raum By Barbara Tetenbaum Leipzig: Triangular Press, 2009. Edition of 20. 5.75 x 8.875" closed, extends to 19 x 23.5", single sheet book. Silk-screen printed onto paper. Hand-applied watercolor. Map backed with linen. Contained in a mylar map slipcase. Barbara Tetenbaum: "This artist map is a response to Martin Heidegger's essay "Art and Space" (Die Kunst und der Raum) originally published in 1969. In the essay, Heidegger explains his new understanding of space after viewing the sculpture of Eduardo Chillida which led him to the realization that space is something unto itself and is given its special character in the presence of art. Offering a mode of way-finding through Heidegger's obtuse language, I turned Heidegger's words back into a visual form using my own method of sentence-diagramming. "The project was created during a year-long sabbatical in Leipzig, Germany. " $600 |
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Powerfully Exciting Short Story 3.75 x 6.5"; 38 pages. Bound in black cloth with paper title on spine. An artists' book for literary theorists, this postmodern metafiction harkens to the heady (and puzzling) days of conceptual art. This is the reductio ad absurdum of conceptual art applied to literature. A Powerfully Exciting Short Story is the framework for "a powerfully exciting short story." The story begins: "Chapter One," "(a woodcut showing a scene of dramatic light and shadow)," and "Here is set a mood of calm-before-the-storm…." On the last page: "(this image makes perfect sense now)." The images are written about only: "(a small ornament)," "(a complicated image showing for modes of transportation)," or "(a small woodcut illustrating this clue)". This is the short story Sol LeWitt would have written had he been a writer: telling without showing, generality without specific, skeleton without meat (and certainly no heart). But it does have one other level, a level that perhaps justifies calling this an artists' book, and not just a postmodern mindgame. A Powerfully Exciting Short Story has form, form with all the expectations that form. It's elegant and neat, a small and austere book that fits comfortably into the hand; the printing is clear and crisp, promising weightiness, gravity, significance, and attendant honesty. Just a game? Or something powerfully exciting? |
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By Barbara Tetenbaum 8.5 x 5.1". Bound-in accordion fold with 14 panels. Hand-set type, old engravings, and miscellaneous surfaces. One object lesson rendered visually and typographically, or how one person found balance and a chance to move forward?
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Half-Life 25 Years of Books 7.625 x 10.625"; 47 pages. This book was composed in types that come from John Downer's Paperback, a brand new revival/remix of the hardy Schotch Romans that shouldered the bulk of American commercial publishing before the advent of photosetting. This book was set range-right with four to the em wordspacing, using only type sizes from the typographer's traditional pallette. This book contains new pages from Gymnopoedia No. 4 and a catalogue raisonne' for the years 1978-20005; A Catalog of Advertising Cuts from the Collection of Triangular Press; and A Chronology of Events in the artistic life of Barabara Tetenbaum, with commentary by Jim Carmin and Uta Schneider.
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| Triangular Press Out of Print Titles: • Ode to a Grand Staircase (For Four Hands) |
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Gymnopaedia no. 4 7 x 11"; 24 pages. Printed letterpress from bell wire, sheet magnet, advertising cuts, and decorative rule. Text hand-set in foundry Trump Mediaeval. Bound in blue book cloth with paper title label on front board. This is the fourth in Tetenbaum's Gymnopaedia series, all somehow connected to musical scores. Gymnopaedia no. 4 is a score that is primarily visual, although it does have minimal text. The four parts run in columns from top to bottom of the page, all four fitting across one two-page spread. If you number the voices from left to right, voice one is almost purely abstract and resembles voice prints. Voices two, three, and four decrease in abstraction – at least the images do. There are seemingly unrelated meta-directions ("sustain the moment," "stubborn and childlike"). And voices three and four seem to be having a Beckett-like conversation. If it's music, it's silent, imaginary, and beautifully printed – like a four-leaf clover imagined by a blind woman. |
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Page last update: 01.11.12
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