Saturday, October 27, 2012

Fall News

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E X H I B I T I O N S 
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Art of the Book: Artist Books and Altered Books

Lower Link Gallery
Central Library of Rochester & Monroe County
115 South Avenue
Through December 9, 2012





Material Meditation on Mending Al Mutanabbi Street, my contribution to the Al-Mutanabbi Street Coalition Project, is on display in "Art of the Book: Artist Books and Altered Books." This is the second annual juried exhibition sponsored by the Rochester Public Library in keeping with its 100 year history of promoting books and reading.

Anita Wahl and Corinne Clar at the Central Library had the idea of displaying my book re-configured as prints depicting the recto and verso of each page. I provided the files and they generously printed and framed the lot, now on display along the Link Gallery corridor that connects Rundel with the B&L library building.

<http://worldartevents.blogspot.com/2012/10/art-of-book-and-al-mutanabbi-street.html>

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ImageART Twenty20

Visual Studies Workshop Gallery and Bookstore
31 Prince Street, Rochester New York
September 29 - October 20, 2012

In celebration of ImageOut's twenty year anniversary, ImageArt invited past winners of their juried competition to exhibit in a "reunion" exhibition hosted by Visual Studies Workshop Gallery and Bookstore. It gave me the opportunity to display two installation works that don't often see the light of day: "Junk Mail," and "Scout."

"Junk Mail" doesn't need much interpretation. Anyone with a mail box has no doubt seen the proportion of unsolicited mailings to personal correspondence weigh heavily towards the former. The shred featured in this iteration is from financial and tax records, two sources too sensitive for blue-box recycling.





"SCOUT" was conceived as a comment on gays in the military before "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" was repealed, but still resonates with the Boy Scouts of America's discriminatory policies. 





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A Q U I S I T I O N 
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George Eastman House 
International Museum of Photography and Film
has approved "Digitalocomotion: Let Your Fingers Do The Walking" for inclusion in their permanent collection.





"Digitalocomotion" was conceived in 1981 as a piece for "BANANACO", a correspondence art project I started in the early 1970s.  It was realized as a DIY postcard printed on the storied AB Dick duplicator at Visual Studies Workshop. The post card exhibited some of the patina of Muybridge's  "Animal Locomotion" collotypes, but ultimately it exposed my abject failure as an offset printer. Though Muybridge is the obvious referent, I would not have made the piece without exposure to Hollis Frampton and Marianne Faller's "Vegetable Locomotion" series. 

"Let Your Fingers Do The Walking Through the Yellow Pages" was a jingle used by the phone company for many years but is no doubt obscure to persons of a digital age (as soon the printed phone book will be). In this print, my walking fingers traverse a spread that features the logo for "let your fingers . . ." plus an ad for direct mail (chosen for the mail art aspect of the original project). More archaic references can be found in the background grid which illustrates the basic layout of a two-page spread of the printed yellow pages book attached to a drawing board with push pins. The layout of the photos surrounded by a tinted frame and the text along the bottom is patterned after the Muybridge plates.

Many thanks to Jamie M. Allen, Assistant Curator of Photographs, for initiating and facilitating this transaction.



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C I T A T I O N S   O F   I N T E R E S T 
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ADBUSTERS VOL.20 NO.5



The title of my summer show at Visual Studies Workshop, "Reversing the Catastrophe of Fixed Meaning," was picked up by Adbusters as a theme for their September/October issue. Adbusters has a publication exchange program with Afterimage, which included my catalogue as an insert in Vol.39 No.6. I was cited as an "art contributor" to the Adbusters issue for "title concept and inspiration." This honorific should be shared with, if not totally attributed to Cyril Reade, the curator of the VSW exhibit, who came up with the awesomely inspiring title. (Well, perhaps the work had something to do with it, too.)


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Learning Bookbinding Online


















Last year my good friend Jeanne Verdoux asked me to be a "virtual" guest lecturer in bookbinding for her online Process & Skills class at Parsons New School. I made some instructional videos at my drawing table, provided a tools and supply list and a short bibliography. By all accounts it has been pretty successful. Read her take on it here.

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