2020
Mixed media artists book
6.125” x 4.25” x 4.25”

From a series of 9 artists’ book works, each focusing on one of the 9 sections in Hildegard von Bingen’s Physica, as translated from Latin to English by Priscilla Throop. Metals is a four-walled pyramid structure; each wall of the structure has a metal sample inset into the board on both the inside and the outside, with text accompanying. Both the metals and text are overlaid with mica. Included metals are brass, copper, iron, steel, tin, gold, silver, and lead.

2020
Mixed media artists book
6″ x 3.75″ x 3.875″

From a series of 9 artists’ book works, each focusing on one of the 9 sections in Hildegard von Bingen’s Physica, as translated from Latin to English by Priscilla Throop. This rigid page book has covers and text pages of thick oak, bound with straps across the spine. On each page is mounted an oil painting of a reptile, with text panels mounted below. Both paintings and text are overlaid with mica. The designation of ‘reptile’ was different in medieval times. This work features a slowworm, toad, frog, baselisk, viper, spider, and scorpion. The cover has a recessed magnifying lens, behind which float rattlesnake rib bones.

2021
Black and white digital photo
8.5″ x 11″

I am a retired social studies teacher and a self-taught photographer. In addition to my work, “Counting Sheep,” I have photographed subjects that lean toward storytelling. Some examples include: The Edward Payson Weston Six-Day Race, Cowtown Rodeo, and The Philadelphia Boxing Club. The majority of my work is centered in South Jersey and Philadelphia.

2017
Letterpress and archival inkjet printing, vegetable-tanned goat leather, gold leaf
9.25″ x 6.25″ x 0.5″

Kyle Anthony Clark is an artist living in southeast Michigan. Kyle’s works explore themes related to place, transience, contemporary masculine identity, and the landscape. His works often take the form of artists’ books, prints, and photographs. Additionally, Kyle actively collaborates with artists and creatives to produce artists’ books and book art objects. The manifestation of the handmade book within Kyle’s work is critical to creating a personal viewing/reading experience. The artists’ book as a mode of communication expands the walls of gallery spaces and libraries, ultimately leading the reader through a haptic exploration that no other medium can afford.

Kyle Clark, Brighton, Michigan

2016
Letterpress and archival inkjet printing, laser cutting, bookcloth and binders board
18.9” x 18.5” x 1”

Kyle Anthony Clark is an artist living in southeast Michigan. Kyle’s works explore themes related to place, transience, contemporary masculine identity, and the landscape. His works often take the form of artists’ books, prints, and photographs. Additionally, Kyle actively collaborates with artists and creatives to produce artists’ books and book art objects. The manifestation of the handmade book within Kyle’s work is critical to creating a personal viewing/reading experience. The artists’ book as a mode of communication expands the walls of gallery spaces and libraries, ultimately leading the reader through a haptic exploration that no other medium can afford.

Kyle Clark, Brighton, Michigan

2021
Linoleum block and letterpress printing
35.8 x 33.3 cm

Steve Miller’s words, Kyle Clark’s linocut, Red Hydra Press, 2021

Kyle Anthony Clark is an artist living in southeast Michigan. Kyle’s works explore themes related to place, transience, contemporary masculine identity, and the landscape. His works often take the form of artists’ books, prints, and photographs. Additionally, Kyle actively collaborates with artists and creatives to produce artists’ books and book art objects. The manifestation of the handmade book within Kyle’s work is critical to creating a personal viewing/reading experience. The artists’ book as a mode of communication expands the walls of gallery spaces and libraries, ultimately leading the reader through a haptic exploration that no other medium can afford.

Kyle Clark, Brighton, Michigan

2021
Artists book with handmade paper and paper sculptures
5″ x 7″ x 3″

Sleeping and suspended, my winged sculptures are inspired by the mystery of Hawaii’s endemic mammal the ōpe’ape’a (half-leaf), or the Hoary Bat. Little is known about this hairy beast and they are rarely seen, but I’ve witnessed a flock of myna birds chase away a solitary ōpe’ape’a from a massive lychee tree by my house. My research hypothesizes that the arrival of invasive species or deforestation for tourism has endangered the ōpe’ape’a population. I fear that these beautiful and arcane animals will become extinct if we are not actively preserving our forest and minimizing commercial development in Hawaii. As a sustainable effort within my creative process, I upcycled fruit branches from farms during the pruning season and harvested non-native fruits and recycled paper in the making of my handmade paper for my artist book.

2017
Silkscreen overprinting on pages from the 1978 Atlas de Cuba
9.6″ x 104″ x .5″

Steven Daiber has worked with books for more than 30 years. Daiber uses books as objects and text-based art to explore a sense of place in the world.

Daiber has traveled to Cuba regularly since 2001, where he partners with local artists to create art books through Red Trillium Press/Aquí en la lucha. Cronica insular is a trilogy based on facilitated dialogues and themes Cuban artists describe in their social and political relationships: Poder was published in 2010, Privacidad in 2011, and La espera in 2013.

Daiber also engages with the landscape directly through site-specific book installations, interventions in the forest, and prints from the remnants of past commercial timbering. For 23 years, Daiber has been adding to a wall of books that acts as a property line on the land where he lives in Massachusetts. Daiber carries the books on his back through the woods from his local library to the corner of his property, where he leaves them exposed to years of natural decay.

2021
Organza, thread, paper, wire
6.5″ x 10.25″ x 0.5″

The similarity between nature and the human body fascinates me. I make thread matrixes that resemble blood vessels, root systems, and tree vines. What these shapes have in common is that they split into thinner appendages to both absorb and distribute nourishment. I often wonder if love is similar to this.

The needle for me is like the writer’s pen. I express myself with thread on organza. Organza allows me to reveal the thread system more clearly on the top layer and more obscurely on bottom layers. I hope to stimulate the imagination of the person viewing my art by hiding some parts under the layers of organza and, at the same time, create depth both visually and symbolically. This is a metaphor. There is often much more under the surface than what is easily visible.

Thread to me has always been the element which connects the individual parts. It symbolizes connections. Perhaps, the hanging threads in my work are my attempt to establish a connection with the world.

2021
Book with mixed media
7.5″ x 14″ x .5″

SAY THEIR NAMES is my personal response to this past year, the Black Lives Matter movement, the tragic deaths of so many people of color. This is the most difficult book I have ever created. I found myself avoiding it. Every time I sat down to work on it, there was another name or two or more to add. The format of this book is a typographical crescendo. It begins with a few names on the first spread, adding more names to each spread until the pages are filled with the names of the dead. It culminates with a pop-up of the word “names.” The photographs incorporated are all from Black Lives Matter demonstrations (all photos are from Unsplash). The year 2020 as a Muse has been heartbreaking.

Katie Delay, Ottawa Hills, Ohio

2020
Book with cut paper
7.5″ x 11″ x 1.25″

This book is a story told without words—a small red circle which grows larger and larger on each spread until it bursts unexpectedly into a pop-up explosion of color. A simple story, but an allegory for the year 2020 where something started as a small event and grew and grew into a global pandemic. I think most of us reached a breaking point, and sometimes the results were totally unexpected. Sometimes something extraordinary happened. Sometimes we grew, learned, appreciated, re-evaluated. Sometimes we were a little explosion of color.

Katie Delay, Ottawa Hills, Ohio

2021
Mixed media
9″ x 31″ x 27″

Number Nine is a reflection on the digital root of any multiple of nine. The aura of nine is my muse. Every element of the book is based on a multiple of 9. This book is dedicated to understanding that math is the key to the universe and makes the invisible visible.

Rose DeSloover, Southfield, Michigan

Photography credit: Naomi Tajonera

2021
Screenprint, crankie and box
16.25″ x 10″ x 2.5″

My artwork is inspired by mythology, folklore, and traditional stories. I am interested in the way in which human beings, across nations and time, have sought to explain the world around them through story. My work seeks to explore the female role within these stories and to center and amplify the women within them. With The Seven Ravens I bring focus to the lesser-known story of a young heroine. Here a girl is the center of our tale, and not as the damsel in distress, but as a brave adventurer set out as her family’s savior. The Seven Ravens is an artist book made in an edition of three.

Ashley DeVan, Powder Springs, Georgia

2018
Mixed media
13″ x 38″ x 9.25″

I currently work in the form of the book, both as solo practitioner and in the public sphere of community engagement. I create work and projects which push the boundaries of the book into new forms and materials, inviting altered ways of viewing the world and how we inhabit it. Although the work remains tethered to loose definitions of the book as structure, it is moving progressively into other sculptural and conceptual realms where devotion to material labor and passion for the haptic become muse.

Having worked in the realm of the built environment for many years, I am fascinated by the parallels between books and buildings in terms of architecture, meaning, and utility. Each constructs public and private spaces where stories are “read” on many levels, often revealing more than their authors and makers ever intended. My work seeks to offer places of contemplation, solace, and bafflement, while instigating exploration, investigation, and examination of what we think we know, and are.

Photography credit: Bernard Wolf

2020
Artists book, pigment print on paper
11″ x 9.5″ x 1″

This is a pandemic-induced artist book made in a time of borders; this one is full of thoughts about being an artist in such times. In it, I turn to my teacher/muse. The book was completed in the winter of 2020. It consists of digitally created images based on the artist’s digital photos combined with her digital drawings. Images and book pages are pigment printed on archival paper. All aspects of this book are by the artist, including text, printing, and binding.

2021
Artist book, pigment printed on paper
4.25″ x 4.25″ x 1.5″

When the news is too much to bear, the muse steps in to show the artist a path to mental health. Gold Leaf is made of the digital drawings, prints, photographs, and writings of Jan Dove. Each image starts with a photograph of gold leaf.

2021
Artist book, pigment print on paper
11.5″ x 12.5″ x .5″

When the isolation becomes tedious, the muse steps in to help the artist ask important questions. Chronicles in the Time of Corona is made of the digital drawings, prints, photographs, and writings of Jan Dove. The book was completed in the spring of 2021. It is pigment printed on Canson Rag Photographique and bound with Tyvex reinforcement.

2021
Artist book
10.5″ x 7″ x 1.5″

Early in 2020, when it seemed that the entire world was in lockdown because of a new virus, I chanced upon a news article about how pandemic first responders reported dreams with common patterns. Doctors, nurses, and paramedics were connected not just by shared trauma, but by communal dreams as well.

Wondering if these patterns repeated in the general populace, I began collecting quotes from global news articles which chronicled reactions to the unique times we were sharing. While doing so, I began painting dreams that reflected our collective dreaming.

Pandemic Dreams is my exploration of how we have globally processed the stress of dealing with an invisible menace through our dreams. The front pages of my book explore how we regard masks as both protection and containment by using origami forms to cover parts of the faces. The waves in my paintings contain pleas for medical help in multiple languages. The back pages contain selections of quotes I’ve collected from news sources.

2020
Letterpress, hand-bound accordion folios
14″ x 7″ x 1″

Steep, snowy slopes conceal loaded terrains of uncertainty. Hidden layers and evolving conditions make stability, which depends on cohesion, difficult to predict. Avalanches represent the precarious balance of interdependent elements in nature and how their forces can be triggered to devastating effect. Mountaineers can find themselves in a path of destruction generated by their own behavior. This book, through a story of two climbers, explores human vulnerability and vision in navigating physical and existential risks. The story reflects our era of environmental peril and the blind path of progress toward our own potential destruction. Nature’s perpetual change, unexposed tendencies and infinite interconnections are touchstones of human desire. It is a story of joy and despair woven in wilderness. Narrative layers investigate the inescapable reliance of humans on nature’s unfathomable complexities. Graphics portray snowflake crystallography, history, geology, and avalanche dynamics.

2021
Monotype printing, Xerox transfer, charcoal, collage and sand
12.25″ x 11.50″ x 2.25″

Documenting, discussing, and revealing social issues in the border region is a part of my artistic process. This group of work is a commentary on border detention camps for immigrants and the injustices they face while in custody. Through my work, I strive to touch on memory and identity erasure, both metaphorically and literally through imagery and process manipulation. The repetition here is meant to emphasize the sheer number of immigrants affected and the magnitude of the problem. I intend to seductively draw in the viewer with immediate visual beauty while simultaneously positioning them as the abuser as I challenge their perspectives towards the subject at hand. Through my use of imagery, repetition, and materials, I want to push boundaries and raise awareness. Mostly, I intend to have the viewer take responsibility as an active member of society by triggering their senses and exposing the unexpected, embedding a message in the viewer’s mind, and transforming their reality.