Artist's Books & Bookworks

I began making artist's books and bookworks in the mid 1970's. Throughout much of that decade, inexpensively produced, limited edition artist’s books and singular bookworks (or 'unique volumes') served a vital function by offering visual artists a variety of ways to present their work directly to an audience, work that often employed innovative if not groundbreaking formats, at least as far as books were concerned. The artist's book and its more 'sculptural' form, the bookwork, were perfect vehicles for relating to the viewer or reader in a personal, or intimate way. While limited edition artist's books had the advantage of reaching a wider audience by virtue of being multiples, singular bookworks often seemed better able to push experimental boundaries by employing unusual materials, often fielding works that departed from conventional notions of a 'book.' In either case, many of these works by artists of the period were concerned with revealing an inner life or world through visual metaphors, vivid symbols, and other devices. The result of such works, whether intended or not, was often intersubjective and revelatory: all human beings have inner lives that when expressed in some form or another can add complexity and meaning to daily life, for artist and audience alike. Like any other art form, such works have the potential to be enriching. Of course, artists have long embraced the notion of art as a vehicle or portal to an inner life. What a lot of the pioneering art in the 1970’s contributed to this idea was the integration of the commonplace as the primary means toward this end. For many of us the aim was to transform the ordinary or commonplace, including books, into something more or other, thus revealing connections between an every day experience of the world and what might be passed over unseeen. For more on artist's bookworks go here