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Good Read Week opens with Saturday reception |
By TOBIN LEVY
MARFA – The Good Read Week kicks off from 6-8pm Saturday with an opening reception of “Book: An Artists’ Book Show,” at the Do-Right Hall, 106 West Dallas Street.
More than 25 artists – from Texas to New York – have contributed works to the exhibition, which will be up through November 30. The works range in price from $8 to $500, and the artists will donate half of all proceeds to the Marfa Public Library, where funds will benefit community-reading programs throughout the year.
The Good Read, like the Big Read in February, is a one-book – Ray Bradbury’s 1953 novel Fahrenheit 451 – one-community program. Unlike the Big Read, for which Marfa residents read Rudolfo Anaya’s Bless Me, Ultima, and which was a month-long affair, The Good Read is a weeklong series of events, beginning with Saturday’s opening reception of Book.
The exhibition is the brainchild of artist and Farm Stand Marfa organizer Sandra Harper. “I’d been dreaming of putting together an artists’ book show for years,” says Harper. “And when I found out about The Good Read and Fahrenheit 451, I proposed it to [President of Friends of Marfa Public Library] Alice Jennings.”
“Sandra wanted to expand the book into the visual arts and bring the community together in a different way,” says Jennings. “That’s what was so exciting. It’s a reminder that one type of art leads to another type of art, they don’t operate in a vacuum.”
Fahrenheit 451 presents a future American society in which critical thought through reading is outlawed, and in which books are burned (the number “451” refers to the temperature, in Fahrenheit, at which books burn) “for the good of humanity.”
“I first read 451 when I was very young,” Harper says. “For me, it’s always been about freedom of expression and about the importance of books in our culture. I’ve lived a life of books, so the idea of burning one, it’s like burning a person’s mind. So when I found out that 451 was selected for The Good Read, I thought, let’s all make books and present them in artistic ways so that we’re not confined by skills that only writers have. We can use other skills to make books, for instance building skills and sewing skills.”
In soliciting work for the show – submissions will continue to be accepted and displayed for the duration of the exhibition - Harper employed a quote by Spanish poet Juan Ramon Jimenez, one that appears at the beginning of 451: “If they give you ruled paper, write the other way.” Essentially, no rules apply. When creating books for the show, Harper only asks that the artists “play with the idea of the book.” Artists are in no way confined to the traditional codex form. There need not be text, or a front and back page. And, of course, binding is optional. Such parameters, or lack thereof, are part of what define the seemingly definition-resistant art form.
Although many contemporary scholars consider 18th century English artist and poet William Blake’s books Songs of Innocence and Experience - which were written, illustrated, printed, colored and bound by Blake – as early examples of the “artists’ book,” the term originated in the 20th century along with an ongoing debate about what actually qualifies as an artists’ book.
“It is not a monograph, nor is it a book about an artist, even if it is written by said artist,” explains one of Marfa’s resident art scholars, Caitlin Murray, who is quick to state that her definition of artists’ books, at least compared to some, is largely inclusive. “For many scholars, even the placement of the apostrophe – the artists’ book or the artist’s book – is a point of contention.”
According to Mary Walling Blackburn, an artist, writer, and former Marfa resident now living in New York City, the form relies on the artists’ intent. “It’s often about the artist’s desire to make their viewer hesitate and potentially reorder what they thought was reality,” she explains. “The artist book can be an empty vessel that provides an opportunity for viewers to pause and reflect.”
Along with former Chinati Foundation interns Lauren Klotzman and Elizabeth Lewin, both of whom now also live in New York, Blackburn has contributed, from afar, a piece to the show. Hers is a delicate 17” x 17” white silk scarf printed with an intentional mistranslation of a directive - Den Kopf Benutzen Ist Besser Als Ihn Verlieren- to German prisoners of war held in Marfa during World War II.
Architect Kristin Bonkemeyer’s artists’ books include a series of Styrofoam and wire sculptures. The Styrofoam, which was appropriated from cups, has been torn and shaped in a way that brings to mind gravity – the cause and effect of turning a page. The pieces are ethereal, attracting and refracting light in such a way that demands they be viewed both on a pedestal and suspended in air.
Of the more than 40 pieces in the exhibit, only a handful of the works employ a traditional book format. And, even then, there is nothing conventional about them.
Suzanne Dungan’s spiral-bound book of colored papers consists not of words but of geometric cuttings, each page different from the next but each engaged in a visual dialogue with the other. The experience of flipping through it is like viewing a heavily layered, abstract painting in its various stages of creation.
David Tompkins’ book is a graphic novel entitled, “And I saw Edgar Allan Poe.” Haunting, meticulously crafted drawings, which were done by David and his brother Jeff, are paired with text that is as humorous as it is macabre. The book features Poe, a seminal 19th century literary figure, wandering the darker corners of a bygone Manhattan.
“Poe established a kind of template in American literature. In a mythic sense, he’s seen as the original American writer who’s been cursed and damned,” explains Tompkins, a long-time Marfa resident and the development associate for the Chinati Foundation. “Poe’s existence in New York, where he lived before returning home to die, was as miserable as it was everywhere else, but the city tends to bury its past. As a result, ghosts tend to operate in a peculiar kind of way there – room isn’t made for them, so they make room for themselves.
Five editions of “And I saw Edgar Allan Poe” are included in the exhibit. The interior pages were printed, the paper is handmade and the binding is sewn. Like all of the work in the exhibit, “It’s a book that’s meant to be looked at as much as it’s meant to be read,” says Tompkins. “So it occupies a sort of netherzone between a traditional book and a piece of visual art.”
Also included in the exhibition are works by Marfa residents Jim Martinez, Julie Speed, Alyce Santoro, Sandra Harper, Ross Cashiola, Tim Johnson, Valerie Arber, Campbell Bosworth, and Gretchen Coles. Free copies of Fahrenheit 451 will be available at the opening reception.
Gallery hours are Saturday, November 15, 6-8pm; Sunday, November 16, 2-5pm; Saturday, November 22, 2-5pm; and Saturday, November 29, 2-5. Artists interested in submitting work to the show may contact Sandra Harper at 917-215-6933.
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