Curators' Statement
With the millenium has come a reawakened awareness of high craft as an important component of contemporary art. Correspondingly, the handmade book as both craft and fine art object has garnered its share of interest. The West Coast - as is so often the case - has led the vanguard, with a growing number of important book artists and artisans up and down the coast.
The book-form, finely-honed, is the focus of SFCB's first exhibition of 2008, New West Coast Design: Books. It is also our first exhibition held in conjunction with five other Bay Area galleries - San Francisco Museum of Craft + Design, Velvet da Vinci, Museum of Craft and Folk Art, Bucheon Gallery, and Art Works Downtown - all under the common banner of New West Coast Design.
Inspired by contemporary craft-objects exhibitions held in California from the 1950s to the 1970s, the curatorial criteria held in common by these six galleries is to show - in our various disciplines and from West Coast artists - new work that is as highly informed by technique as by high art.
While curating this particular exhibition, we saw that many of the trends in the contemporary practice of the book arts do parallel those of other craft media, with an extreme diversity of approach to the form, from the resolutely traditional to the purely expressive and experimental.
Differentiating the artist's book from other genres, SFCB artistic director Steve Woodall points out that the personal commitment to acquiring the range of skills involved in making a book can be daunting. The technology of the handmade book might encompass paper making, typography, letterpress printing, fine art printmaking, a range of illustration techniques, calligraphy, and the prodigious subset of crafts that make up contemporary bookbinding. Thus, while there are a surprising number of artists adept at several of these diverse metiers, the making of an edition of books tends to be highly collaborative.
Also distinguishing the artist's book from other genres is the book's inherited role as a carrier of literary art. Therein lies the greatest and still
barely-tapped potential of the artist's book - with literary form realized via the tangible object; the two elements indivisibly entwined in a single expression.
To make such books, each artist in this exhibition had to embark on decades of study and aesthetic reflection partnered with hands-on practice to find their individual ways of translating word and thought into physical form. The reason - as he sees it - is put forth by multi-faceted Pacific Rim thinker and publisher Leonard Koren:
"I want to present . . . as perfect an object as I can.
What it could have been, or should have been, is irrelevant. As the creator,
I have the ultimate responsibility to make sure my books are produced according
to my conception. . . . The problem with bad craftsmanship is that it
needlessly distracts from the purity of your communication; it draws away energy and attention; it raises more questions in the reader's mind that shouldn't be there." - Leonard Koren, from 13 Books (notes on the design, construction & marketing of my last . . . ) Stone Bridge Press, Berkeley, California, 2001
We hope that in viewing New West Coast Design: Books, you'll be as inspired as we are to see the continuous growth in vitality and technical expertise in West Coast book arts during this new century. Every stunning piece shown comes from book artists at the very top of their game. And, while the most prominent book artists still have nowhere near the general recognition they deserve, there is legitimate hope that this will change. What seems clear from our perspective is that the future of the book as a revered icon of culture lies to a great extent with those who create them by hand.
- Kathleen Burch / Mary Austin, curators
co-founders, San Francisco Center for the Book
