Pal Csaba (Hungary) - Untitled

Unique Book, 29 double sided pages, mixed media including painting, collage, printing and drawing.  Pal Csaba (Budapest), a book artist (only part of Pal’s art practice) sent this beautiful book as a submission for Mail Art Makes the World a Town. As the book was bound instead of loose sheets, I was very loathe to dismember it. Luckily for me, Pal did not intend this fate for this work. Abstract Expressionism at its best.   

I met Pal thought Mail Art on IUOMA and although he never sent much Mail Art, he contributed to various book projects.  I consider myself very fortunate to have this book.

The Book of Ether Cheryl Penn (South Africa)/Marie Wintzer (Japan)

Unique Book, mixed media including photographs, painting, collage, X-rays, sewing, text, photocopies.   The origins of this book are hidden deep in our hearts, but its good that finally It Is. A complex work which took time to develop, waited in a drawer for two years, but was finally bound on 20th August 2014.

This book is a beautiful thing.

Toccata and Fugue for Book - (Germany)

Unique Book dated 2012, mixed media

I think Bach’s Toccata and Fugue in D Minor must be one of the most well known pieces of organ music.  It has been played in MANY movies, including Fantasia and Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde. But this is no organ performance piece. This is a book work.   ‘Toccata’ from the Italian – to touch is an apposite word for this beautiful book created from cardboard.  Toccata also intimates fast moving, lightly fingered passages.  This is TICTAC’s EXACT treatment of the filigreed card.

Fugue – a technique which indicates two or more voices. I’m likening TICTAC’s material usage to  this word. Cardboard and acetate are the main mediums of this work.  PLUS, without getting too technical, fugues also consist of connecting passages (episodes) and a  coda.  Conceptually, how much closer can one combine music terms and books than this?

Nancy Bell Scott (USA) Found Sound

Unique Book, Mixed Media dated 22/5/2012.

Tucked away, inside an almost glass pocket lie these words:

Enharmony – Expressing sounds having the same pitch but written (text fades…) but Found Sound NEVER fades. Notes lengthen and brighten, taking on surrounding color as the sun gleams on pages building crescendo's. You know what found sound looks like - it looks like this book. 

You KNOW the sound of beautifully crafted pages turning. The sound of paint sighing with gentle contentment  to be living where they exists in harmony with materials entangled in its colour.  This is that book. Where music lives visually.  And close up? Its no different. It just gets deeper. And deeper.

All accessible  art is easy to enjoy, whether it be music, literature or visual. When all three are contained in one volume, a whole world of pages takes up its tune. Semi-tones may apply in Music, but this book?  It holds perfect time. 

ART Book. Alekyan, Karen (Armenia)

Collage, drawing, asemic text, visual poetry, painting and precision cutting - this book boasts most art forms and mediums.  Clearly asserting Karen Alekyan’s personal views on a future state of art, his cover states: “Art will have no geographic limits, depending on regional, local cultural diversities. It will have no color, smell, form, weight, shape, direction, timeline and history, because it will be created Everywhere and Always. Art will be Worldwide - Universal. Art will be Everywhere and with Everyone. Art will be Absolutely Individual. Final words: The Art of the future will get rid of social-economic, political, religious, institutional, state, financial monitoring, the result of which , the era of World Modernism will end. The Art Cultural System will no longer be hierarchical in production and will be free of any kind of business, propaganda notions which meet the interests of cultural hierarchies. Creative Society will come instead of a consumer one”.

A Utopian or Dystopian view? As with most ‘isms’, it depends on your own vantage point. As it is, the persona of an image is a fragile construction, carrying within it the notion of change. Systems of representation are in a precarious and constant state of flux - this world, this time already operates far beyond the visions of earliest 20th century avant-garde imagination.

Through the Peep Hole - Nadine Wendell -Mojica (USA)

A delightful book received while an avid member of IUOMA in July 2012.  Key-hole people - those distorted eyeball views of the unwanteds who INSIST on ringing your apartment doorbell at the most inopportune times  - the PERFECT reasons to get your doorbell disconnected - as I confess I've done. The note inside the book informs the reader that these are ink-blow drawings.

DADANAUTIC (Germany) Go for a stroll in Bremen

DADANAUTIC (Germany)

Go for a stroll in Bremen

The study of artists books has definitely helped stretch the idea of what a book may be defined as.  Artists books are works of art that use the form of the book.  This involves a wide range of forms including loose items in a box, or objects glued in a box/cover.  The latter is the one-of-a-kind book object sent by DADANAUTIC comprising objects collected from a stroll in Bremen - a flâ·neur comes to mind, although I don’t think they spent much time looking at the ground.