A set of posts about my fledging artist’s book collection.
The other morning I was dusting my artist’s book collection and re-looking at some favorites. Later I saw this Room for Debate, discussing “why we collect stuff.” There are a couple of posts from people who collect, and I especially enjoyed this one by a woman who collects “the dolls I never had as a child.”
This little (2-1/2″ x 3-1/2″) accordion book is another one in my artist’s book collection. I’m always fond of books with chairs, and these are especially fun, as Elaine (from Blue Chair Press) photographed chairs she made from veggies she got at her local farmer’s market.
Last year my friend Cathy gave me this lovely tunnel book by Dominic Riley. It has slits along the sides to let in more light. Click on the images below to see an even larger photo.
It’s been a long time since I posted a book in my artist’s book collection. Then the other day I read that the poet Kay Ryan had gotten a MacArthur Fellow Genius award. I have a broadside from a reading she did at the SF Center for the Book in 2001 hanging near my own press (that’s it to the left — click on it to get a larger image and read the poem). Ryan had allowed the Center to use her poetry in a book produced by a year-long letterpress class — the text is in Centaur, set by hand, and the drawings, by Michelle Geiger, were done in photopolymer. I also have a copy of that book, which I happily re-read. The title page is shown below.
It was a year ago when my husband & I decided to move to Santa Fe — it’s been a tremendous amount of work and stress to move our lives from one state to another, plus remodelling our new house pretty much ourselves. Last Saturday we celebrated with a restaurant dinner (ah! to wear a dress and heels rather than paint spattered jeans with the knee missing and a t-shirt with a thousand stains!)
Despite all the problems with our house, I would buy it again for the trees — we’re surrounded by pinons, russian olives, junipers & aspens. When the long to-do list gets overwhelming, I rejuvenate by watching the birds at my feeder or, more likely, listening to the aspens rustle. I mistakenly thought quaking aspens only made their fluttering noise in the fall when the leaves dried, but even the green leaves make a pleasing whisper when they rub together in a breeze.
Several years ago I bought the broadside above of Robert Haas’ poem The Problem of Describing Trees for the line “There are limits to saying, / In language, what the tree did.” When this week I finally got the chance to hang it up, it seems even better with the aspen tree images. The print is by Sara Langworthy and signed by Haas. Here’s the poem, and you can read an interview with Haas about the poem here.
The aspen glitters in the wind.
And that delights us.
The leaf flutters, turning,
Because that motion in the heat of summer
Protects its cells from drying out. Likewise the leaf
Of the cottonwood.
The gene pool threw up a wobbly stem
And the tree danced. No.
The tree capitalized.
No. There are limits to saying,
In language, what the tree did.
It is good sometimes for poetry to disenchant us.
Dance with me, dancer. Oh, I will.
Aspens doing something in the wind.
— Robert Hass
