Christian Faur uses a color alphabet in his art. He’s used it in these striped paintings, where each stripe is a letter (thickness connotes the duration of the letter in the word, and white denotes the end of a word). First the key, then a close up of “Rules Can Create Artwork” and then several of the works on the wall I saw at the Kim Foster Gallery. The theory behind the color choices is described here. Also check out how he uses the alphabet to make portraits from crayons here.
Several of my books have come out of projects that started badly — or at least off kilter. So I really enjoyed Harriet Bart‘s description of how her book Ghost Maps happened.
In 2010 I was a Resident Fellow at the Virginia Center for creative Arts in Amherst, Virginia where I had time to research, and develop new work. I brought a few basic art materials and several books to read, among them Italo Calvino’s fantastic and evocative tale Invisible Cities.
Settling into VA5, my assigned studio, I noted the light was good, the ceiling high, the white walls ample, but the paint-splattered and stained concrete floor was a distraction.
I requested—and was denied—permission to repaint the floor. That seemingly insignificant chance encounter marked the beginning of a series of new projects.
I started to see the encrusted floor as a palimpsest, a cartography of the creative process, even an archive. Attending to color and repetition, I marked off sections of the floor with tape, scrubber the spaces between them and took aerial photographs.
See her other books on her website.
I am fortunate to have one of Leonard Seastone’s books — White Tulips — with haiku by Ronald Baatz. Seastone & Baatz have a new book called The Delicate Work of Song, this one embellished with ideograms by Guyang Chen. It’s really lovely:
Islam Aly‘s book The Square represents both a time and place. He says
(The) Egyptian uprising called for democratic reform. Tahrir Square in Cairo became the focal point and the most effective symbol of the protests in January and February 2011. For 18 days Egyptians repeated the slogan: The People Want to Bring down the Regime (al-sha`b yurid isqat al-nizam) until the regime stepped down on the 11th of February 2011. This book focuses on the revolution slogan ‘al-sha`b yurid isqat al-nizam.’ Using Arabic Kufic script the words of the slogan are repeated in an ascending sequence. Section 19 contains the English translation for the slogan ‘The People Want to Bring down the Regime.’ The last section contains the time and date when the regime stepped down along with the sentence ‘Al Saa’b Askat al Nezam’ with its English translation ‘The People have Brought down the Regime’. Cairo’s map is laser engraved on the book covers. Three edges of the book are colored then laser engraved to show the streets of Cairo.”
See all the work here
My little blizzard book with my haiku poems was accepted in the Hello Hedi show at 23 Sandy Gallery in Portland OR. The show features 56 works inspired by the myriad structures Hedi has invented during her long career as artist, conservator and teacher. The online catalog of the show is here, and it is in the gallery until July 25, 2015.
