Andrea Dezso

How smitten am I with Andrea Dezso? How admiring am I of her talent, her versatility and her range? How fascinating is it that she's from Romania (Transylvania, no less) and that her Romanian culture and immigrant experience figure often in her art? Let's just say "a lot," and leave it at that. I claim her as a book artist, since she works often in the book form, but, in fact, she is not easily classified, since she is a sculptor, a writer, an illustrator, a designer and a muralist (I'm sure I've missed something -- ah, yes, filmmaker).

The wonderful blog of the Rag & Bone Bindery led me to Dezso's work, and I was hooked. I want to show you every single piece that's on her pages at the Parsons New School for Design site, but I'm limiting myself to just a few. I hope that you'll take a much more extensive look at her work on the Parsons site, which includes detailed information about the both Dezso, her work as a whole and the individual pieces. Here's a recent article from the New York Times.

Dezso, who is 39, came to New York ten years ago after receiving a residency at The New York Center for Book Arts. She teaches at Parsons and takes on projects for clients such as McSweeney's, the indie literary publication (so indie it's now mainstream) founded by writer Dave Eggers. For McSweeney's Issue 23 she masterminded a "poster" which, when folded, allowed each short story in the issue its own individually designed front and back cover. Geesh!

Top right: Pioneers Give First Aid To Their Comrades, Andrea Dezso. One-of-a-kind pop-up book. Paper, board, acrylics, colored pencils. 2007 New York city. "This book was inspired by the first aid classes we were required to take as young pioneers in Romania in the eighties. We learned that if someone has a seizure and becomes unconscious we must pull out their tongue and pin it to their pioneer short with a safety pin to prevent suffocation."

The Moon's Party, Andrea Dezso

One-of-a-kind fold out book about the Moon and her animal friends, 1995

City Ornament, Andrea Dezso
Op Art piece appeared in The New York Times Op-Ed page on December 25th 2006

Above and Below: Of My Son, Andrea Dezso
One-of-a-kind book 1994

Illustration for "Pick Your Poison", Andrea Dezso
, published in The New York Times Op-Ed page on Sunday, May 14th 2006

Shadow Books, Andrea Dezso

One-of-a-kind multi-layered, hand-sewn and cut paper theaters illuminated with light emitting diodes (LED). Installation of books and photographs exhibited at Flux Factory's Cartunnel Comix Fluxture show in 2004. Four books in the series, all in private collections. Size of each book: 4X6X4 inches

The Mothsucker, Andrea Dezso
One-of-a-kind artist's book. Coptic binding by the artist. Mixed media on 100% cotton
Fabriano watercolor paper. Size: 5X7 inches. 1998- 2000. Book in private collection This book documents my challenging adjustment process of living in New York City.

Kidney Cold, Andrea Dezso.

Embroidered Drawing from the "My Mother Claimed" 2006 series. Cotton and metallic floss embroidery and glass beads on cotton canvas

She Wishes She Never Married, Andrea Dezso
Embroidered Drawing from the "My Mother Claimed" 2006 series. Cotton and metallic floss embroidery and glass beads on cotton canvas

Mamushka, Andrea Dezso

Picture book, 16 pages, written and illustrated by Andrea Dezsö. Published in Esopus magazine issue #3 in 2004

New York Dreams (Carousel Book), Andrea Dezso
One-of-a-kind artist's pop-up book on Lana 100% cotton watercolor paper. Mixed media.
Sizes: variable. 1997-98. Collection of the artist

Above and Below: Andrea Dezsö: McSweeney's ISSUE 23 book and wrap-around jacket folded out into a poster
Illuminated paper cutouts, embroidery, drawing, painting, collage, calligraphy– I created the art for McSweeney's issue 23 entirely by hand.

From the McSweeney's website: Every story gets its own front and back cover, drawn, collaged, or embroidered by the polymathic Andrea Dezsö. The whole thing is wrapped in a jacket that unfolds into five square feet of double-sided glory--spread it out one way for dozens of very short stories by Dave Eggers, arranged in what we're pretty sure is a volvelle; flip it over and witness all those Dezsö illustrations stitched into one unbroken expanse.

Book Collaborations in Cuba

Last Thursday, BookWorks, our excellent resource center for book arts, hosted a fascinating lecture by Steve Miller, head of the MFA program in Book Arts at the University of Alabama. Steve is on a semester's sabbatical and is teaching a letterpress class at the nearby Penland School of Crafts this fall. The class is being held in the school's new letterpress and print studio, in whose development Steve had considerable input. His presentation was on the trips he and his students from UA have been making to Cuba since 2004 to collaborate with Cuban artists -- printmakers, poets, papermakers and bookbinders -- on handmade book projects.

The first project (2004) was Diseno/Design (see top right and first image below), a bilingual limited edition book of poems by poet and former U.S. poet laureate Billy Collins. After their return to Alabama, Steve and his students finished an expanded edition of the same book. (Note: there's a tilde over the "n" in the word "diseno," which Blogger doesn't have the capacity to insert, but which creates a separate additional consonant in Spanish and alters the sound of the word). In 2005 they followed a similar process with the bilingual Illegal Use of the Soul, with poems by Cuban poet Luis Francisco Diaz Sanchez and linocuts by Julio Cesar Pena Peralta (there's that missing tilde over the "n" again, in "Pena").

Steve shared an interesting difference in the Cubans' approach to printmaking. In marked contrast to the method with which we're familiar, in which the printmaker is in control of the entire process, in Cuba there are separate roles for "printmaker" and "printer": the "printmaker" prepares the plate, then hands it over to the "printer," who works the press.

In all, there have been eight working trips to Cuba under the auspices of UA to work on various collaborative books. From the start, Steve has approached the project as a genuine collaboration, in spite of the fact that the equipment and resources available to his Cuban counterparts are severely limited. To date, at least half (and often more) of the editions have been distributed in Cuba.

Steve brought copies of the editions for us to see. Laurie Corral, BookWorks' director, supplemented these with several books by Cuban artists from the studio's collection. The latter (the last two book images below) were created using paper bags.

On a related note, you'll want to check out the podcasts of interviews that Steve has done, and continues to conduct, with book artists, papermakers, poets, and other "book people. Check out the Podcast link on the UA Book Arts page here.

Design/Diseno, Billy Collins (poetry), Carlos Ayress Moreno (linocuts), translated by Maria Vargas

Uso Ilegal del Alma/Illegal Use of the Soul, Luis Francisco Diaz Sanchez (poetry), Julio Cesar Pena Peralta (illustrations), translated by Maria Vargas

La Caida del Cielo, Cristina Garcia

Ana Mendieta, Nancy Morejon

Steve Miler, right, and book artist Annie Cicale, at BookWorks

Julie Chen

Octopus, 1992, Julie Chen. Poem by Elizabeth McDevitt

Julie Chen is a very talented book artist whose work I first saw "in person" in February 2007 in Washington, DC at the National Museum of Women in the Arts. NMWA hosted a wondrous exhibition of artists' books, The Book As Art: Artists' Books from the National Museum of Women in the Arts, that included over 100 works from their collection of more than 800 artists' books. Although there's nothing like seeing the work itself, the exhibition catalog is a delight.

Chen started Flying Fish Press in 1987, and describes it as "dedicated to the design and production of books which combine the quality and craftsmanship of traditional letterpress printing with the innovation and visual excitement of contemporary non-traditional book structures and modern typography. There is an emphasis on book structures which can function both traditionally as books as well as sculpturally as objects to be displayed."

Her work is varied and rich in content, both literally and figuratively, and multi-dimensional. Here are a few examples. Featured in the NMWA exhibit were Octopus, True to Life (not shown here) and Bon Bon Mots. Check out the Gallery page on the Flying Fish Press web site for these and other of Chen's books.

Ode to a Grand Staircase (for four hands),
Julie Chen and Barbara Tetenbaum

Bon Bon Mots, 1998, Julie Chen

Personal Paradigms: A Game of Human Experience, Julie Chen

You Are Here, Julie Chen

Bibliokinetics

I've been thinking about pop-up books lately. In a couple of weeks I'll be heading to Arrowmont for a class with book artist Carol Barton, who's known for her skill in paper engineering. And yesterday I stopped in at BookWorks and found a pop-up book class in full session. Led by the very talented designer and book artist Shawn Sheehy, adjunct faculty of book arts at Columbia College in Chicago (the wonderful Audrey Niffeneger is also on the faculty there), the class was creating magical structures that made me wish I had signed up for Shawn's class AND Carol Barton's. (That's one of Shawn's pieces above, part of a book of fabulous creature constructions he has on exhibit at BookWorks this week.)

Su Blackwell is a UK-based artist whose work with books is part pop-up book, part papercutting and part fairy tale. Her three-dimensional "book-cut sculptures" are delicate and mysterious, and some are darker upon reflection than they appear at first glance. From her web site:

The Quiet American, 2006

"In a way, Su Blackwell's book-cut sculptures are very similar to receiving a marked-up copy of a book from a friend. Their particular interpretation of the text is privileged for your consideration and you can re-evaluate your response to the work through the lens of their relationship. It's like turning books into memories.

" her reconstruction offers up to the viewer many questions. We can no longer physically read the book, so in that way it is made redundant; and yet on another level it has taken on a new life and is telling a different story. Her work gives a new dimension to the rich European tradition of storytelling..."

And Blackwell says:

"The wear on my books, as physical objects, holds their history and makes my relationship with their contents immediate and visceral. The books I carry when I travel get stained and frayed, and the damage tells a story. I love second-hand books that have been marked up with pencil because I can see what was important to the person who read it before me."

Birds, Beast and Fishes, 2007