I found these drawings that I made over the year following my bike accident in which I broke both arms and my drawing hand, and got concussion. I remember at the time I drew these feeling dismayed at not being able to access my mind on any level, but looking at the drawings now I realise that they are actually really accurate.
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You can’t really talk about artists books without first blowing a kiss to the Godfather, Ed Ruscha. When I was at Elam a few of these books were in the library, you could take them home with you. I wonder if they are still there or if someone could not resist the urge to nick them.
from Wikipedia:
Between 1962 and 1978, Ed Ruscha produced sixteen small artist’s books:
▪ Twentysix Gasoline Stations, 1962
▪ Various Small Fires, 1964
▪ Some Los Angeles Apartments, 1965
▪ Every Building on the Sunset Strip, 1966
▪ Thirtyfour Parking Lots, 1967
▪ Royal Road Test, 1967 (with Mason Williams and Patrick Blackwell)
▪ Business Cards, 1968
▪ Nine Swimming Pools and a Broken Glass, 1968
▪ Crackers, 1969
▪ Real Estate Opportunities, 1970
▪ Babycakes with Weights, 1970
▪ A Few Palm Trees, 1971
▪ Records, 1971
▪ Dutch Details, 1971
▪ Colored People, 1972
Hard Light, 1978 (with Lawrence Weiner)
Wait And See
When I was a child my family had a book called Wait And See. In my recollection it is small, squarish with a hard cover and cotton stitching that was somewhat old and sagging, so that the pages were a bit loose. The book had some story about a girl, which I don’t remember at all. What I do remember is that every second page of the book said “wait and see” the words were in quite small font, right in the middle of the page, like this:
wait and see
.
Mostly I used to read the book by reading every second page, the wait and see page. Maybe it was because I was not very good at reading, or maybe compared to the trite stories most children’s books contained ‘wait and see’ was quite compelling. Read this way it was all waiting and no seeing. The potential was endless.
Not that this has too much to do with an artist’s book, which presumably has as much to do with seeing as waiting. It does however have a bit to do with looking at a book (as opposed to reading it for its story) I remember this book as a tactile object; it’s thin yellowed pages slightly loose on their cottons and those little words floating in the empty page. I also, retrospectively, remember it as a performative moment, I could choose how to read the book, and by so doing reinvent it entirely. I did not have to be an obedient viewer reading from beginning to end, it worked just as well backwards.
-jill
A Chronological Manor’s new project for 2011
For this project the A Chronological Manor group will be joined by will be Caroline Powley, HOD Design, Whitecliffe College of Arts and Design. We are envisaging that it will take the form of a publication or series of publications, in which the artists will generate the content, while the design, provided by Caroline Powley, will provide a structure or vernacular for the discursive conversation we wish to facilitate. We are approaching this project as investigative research into the ways in which the book format provides a platform for the dissemination of artistic practice separate from, and independent of, the exhibition format. Rather than operating in any way like a catalogue or survey of works, we are interested in the book as a creative and curatorial project in itself. That is it is it does not defer to an external art event; it is the event.
