Codex 2013 International Book Fair

I spent two afternoons at the Codex show in their beautiful new exhibition space on the bay in Richmond, CA, and regretted that I hadn't had time to attend all four days. It's a biannual international show, with180 exhibitors this year, and included a wide range of books from leatherbound limited edition letterset volumes with woodcut engravings to one-of-a-kind artist books, all shown by the artists and/or publishers. I spoke with exhibitors from Russia, Mexico, Canada, Australia, France, Germany, England, and of course the United States. And, rather late in the first day I found that three of my new series, Wish You Were Here, were included in the Seager Gray Gallery exhibit, and I can't tell you how delighted I was to be included in such distinguished company!

Once again, I loved the work of Leonard Seastone, of Tideline Press, shown below.

His new book, The Delicate Work of Song, was designed and printed by Seastone, with calligraphic characters designed by Guyang Chen. At first glance they reminded me of a sort of hybrid of Arabic, Hebrew and Old English, but in fact the artist based them on our familiar Roman alphabet, the letters melded together into a sort of ideogram. The book has  featherweight cedar covers and a leather spine, and the pages are printed on special paper made by a Japanese National Treasure. For the finishing touch, Seastone has dyed the sewing thread a rich yellow. I wish I could tell you more about the text and its author, and about the meaning of the individual characters.  And I wish I could afford to own a copy!

At the other extreme of the spectrum were the beautiful one-of-a-kind artist books and objects by Mexican artist Adrian White, below.

The upper photo shows a miniature book of loose and sewn pages, inside an old suede-lined cigarette case. The artist has included his own drawings and old family photos that he's sanded and drawn over, and some pages have been buried to add patina. In the lower photo is a little tin containing small objects and a poem by the artist, and the necklace he's made to go with it.  

Isabelle goes to Miami

This is one of my newest series, "Wish You Were Here", in which I combine images from my mother's family album with vintage book pages and engravings. In this one, a digital transparency of my mother as a very serious three-year-old is overlaid on an engraving titled "The Riding Lesson". Watched by a governess, young girls in summer frocks are being taught to ride ponies - sidesaddle.  

Seager Gray Gallery has selected twelve pieces from this series to take to Aqua Miami later this month, and I couldn't be more pleased. Visit www.seagergraygallery.com for news and images of current and upcoming exhibits.

Bay Printmakers Open Studio

Bay Printmakers is a group of twenty terrific artists, working in a great variety of styles and techniques, and we held our Open Studio once again in the Fleet Room at Fort Mason last weekend.

Yes, we're all printmakers, but many of us also work in other media, and here is Sylvia Buettner showing Eleanor Murray her witty and elegant ceramic work. I'm happy to say that one of these came home with me.

50/50 Show at Sanchez Art Center

For this year's 50/50 show I decided to work entirely with old photos and tintypes from my mother's family. I've scanned these old images and reproduced them as prints and as digital tranparencies, and layered them in different combinations, as hands-on collages (as opposed to digital collages).
It's a juried show in which 70 artists create 50 small works in 50 days, and the opening reception is this Friday evening, August 24. It's a festive and high-energy event, and I hope to see old friends and meet new ones.

Altered Book Auction

Saturday was the opening reception of the Third Annual Altered Book Show and Auction at Marin Museum of Contemporary Art, which benefits the museum, and was conceived and organized (to a fare-thee-well) by Eleanor Murray. The reception was preceded by a talk by Donna Seager, who juried the exhibit of over 140 works, and gave several honorable mentions and three awards, of which my little book collage above received Second Place.

Some Open Studios

Today I visited several Open Studios, among them the San Francisco Art Institute Graduate Center Open Studio, where my daughter had some pretty impressive work on display. Have a look, at alisonwoods.artspan.com.

Another Chance

The second of the two exhibits curated by Hanna Regev on the theme of Chance, in honor of the centennial of the birth of John Cage opened February 17 at the San Francisco Center for the Book. The exhibit expands the definition of what constitutes a book, with exciting and ambitous interactive works, including a number involving video screens. It will take several visits to do justice to each piece. I feel very honored indeed to be represented with two works in such distinguished company. The show runs through May 12, and you can find a complete list of exhibitors at www.sfcb.org/. My little "Nest for John Cage" is in the photo above.

A beautiful, touching exhibit

Here's my rather poor photo of friend Joe Ramos with one of his subjects at the opening of his exhibit of extraordinary photos at the main branch of the San Francisco Public Library. The show, titled "Acknowledged", is the culmination of six years' work photographing homeless individuals and families (at his own expense) for Project Homeless Connect. A more loving and compassionate collection of portraits would be hard to imagine. The exhibit will run through March 25. The San Francisco Bay Guardian says, "[Joe Ramos shows] the true face of homelessness - in all its complexity, dignity and humanity." I urge you to read the complete review at www.sfbg.com/pixel_vision/2012/01/27/headshots-homeless-photographer-joe-ramos-connects-art-and-social-work.

Chance and Luck

Curator Hanna Regev created two invitational exhibits in honor of the centennial of the birthday of John Cage, on the subject of Chance. The first exhibit, at SOMArts Gallery, is titled, "Get Lucky: The Culture of Chance". The gallery was packed, but I was able to take the photo below before the crowds arrived. My grid of nine pieces is on the wall at the left, and in the foreground is David Middlebrook's amazing piece,"Bamboozled". Below that is a closeup of one of my nine pieces, collectively titled "Against All Odds".

Update on Open Studio

Here's one of the pieces I sold last weekend at Open Studio. It's from a series called "Epilogues", and they're made entirely of things found either on the street or in wastepaper baskets. And here's my question: Where do all the rusty paperclips on the street come from? But now you know who picks them up...

Fifty works in fifty days

I'll be taking part this year in the third annual 50/50 exhibit at Sanchez Art Center. This is a terrific juried fund-raising event in which 70 artists each create 50 six-inch works in 50 days. I call this series "Notations", and you can see all 50 on my website at www.janetjonesfineart.com/notations/notationspage.html.

Meeting an old friend, at last

After many years of email correspondence, I finally met German collagist and teacher Cordula Kagemann, who was briefly in San Francisco with her husband, Michael. They visited my studio and had dinner with my husband and me, and then the next day I took them to meet Joan Schulze, another cyber-friend of Cordi's. Here they are with Joan in her beautiful studio. You can see Joan's elegant quilts and collages at http://www.joan-of-arts.com/, and learn more about Cordi at http://www.cordulakagemann.com/.

Altered Book Show

Kudos to Eleanor Murray, who conceived and produced the Altered Book exhibit and auction currently showing at Marin MOCA (Museum of Contemporary Art). I'm one of 150+ artists who contributed works for this fund-raiser to benefit MOCA. My little piece titled "Reliquary" is shown in the right-hand column of this page.

The art of the book

I'm delighted once again to be included in Donna Seager's annual Art of the Book exhibit at her San Rafael gallery. I had a preview of the show when I delivered some of my Ex Libris pieces, made from old book covers and sealed in encaustic, with hand lettering. 

Tribal and Textile Arts Fair

Still a bit dazed by all the visual stimulation of the Codex Book Fair, I went to the Tribal and Textile Arts Fair, another blockbuster international exhibit. I was particularly struck, as I've been before, by the beauty of the Japanese folk tradition of pieced cotton textiles, and the very strong similarity to some of the Gee's Bend quilts. Both use white thread in a running stitch, often with the knots at the ends of the thread providing a sort of punctuation mark, and both stem from the strong necessity of making use of every valuable scrap of available material. I found an excellent article on Japanese patchwork online at www.kimonoboy.com/short_history.html.

Codex III Book Fair Highlights

The Codex III book fair, which took place in Berkeley for four days, ending February 9, was all I hoped for and more. There were 138 exhibitors from around the world presenting world class work, and I'm still a bit dazzled by the experience. In particular I loved the elegant simplicity of the letterpress books of Leonard Seastone, of The Tideline Press in New York State. In the top photo he holds an example of a clever book structure that lies flat when opened, and a spread of this book is shown in the middle photo. He prints large sheets of paper with wood type characters, and then cuts the papers up and reassembles them into book pages, with an eye to the abstract relationships of the characters and the space around them. The bottom photo shows two pages of a delightful book in which he's created formal compositions by typing (remember the typewriter?) directly onto the book pages. If you look closely you can identify the characters. 

Holly Roberts at Modern Book

I love it when an artist whose work I've
long admired turns out to be every bit as great
in person as I'd hoped. I've been following the
work of New Mexico artist Holly Roberts for
several years now, so when she was at Modern
Book Gallery for a book signing last week I went
to meet her and buy the handsome book of her
work from 2000-2009 that the gallery has
published. We talked a bit about not being
afraid to go to the "dark side" and the saving
grace of humor, and I wished she lived nearer
and that I could know her better. Her work
will be on view through August 28 at
Modern Book, 49 Geary, San Francisco.

modernbook.com
hollyrobertsstudio.com

Book arts

Here's a photo of Howard Munson, book artist
and teacher, taken at last year's Printers' Faire
in San Francisco. He's holding a damaged
antique Japanese screen, showing the trove
of wonderful old papers packed into the back.
He told me that antique dealers are often able
to date old screens by opening the back and
reading the dates of the newspapers that were
used as filling. 

And now for something completely different...

Here's a hilarious bit on youtube for art lovers:
www.youtube.com/watch_popup?v=erbd9cZpxps.
An article in the May Art News told how it was created,
and named the works. When you've given up on
identifying the hard ones, you can find the list at
www.janetjonesfineart.com/artnewstitles.html.

New Lark Publication

I'm one of 40 artists from 7 countries represented
in this new book, and frankly, I'm thrilled! It's
beautifully printed, and available in bookstores
and on Amazon. It's been great to learn more
about artists whose work I've been following for
some time, and to meet new ones. A plus is that
I've had some lovely email exhanges with others
in the book and found some strong affinities with
people I'm looking forward to knowing better.