Last three hours for Uncommon Threads!
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© Nanette Wylde, Between Us |
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© Nanette Wylde, Between Us |
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Sue Collard, Interlinear |
We mailed catalogs to 30 special collections libraries at museums and universities across the country and asked hundreds more to vote online for their three favorite books in the show.
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Julie Shaw Lutts, Alterations & |
These committed librarians with a passion for artist books spent a lot of time combing through this amazing show to find the treasures and enthusiastically responded with a huge number of votes.
The artists receiving the most votes:
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Doreen Barnaville, Fading Skills |
Thank you to all of the uncommonly good artists who took part in Uncommon Threads for making this such a successful show. It is hard to believe that there is only one more week before the show comes down. We’ve had a terrific number of enthusiastic visitors to the gallery plus lots and lots of sales for our deserving artists.
Congratulations to everyone.
Have a good weekend,
Laura
Three Uncommonly Good Works
23 Sandy Gallery is pleased to honor three artists with a Best of Show Award for Uncommon Threads: The Handicrafts in Book Arts. These three works are exemplary in content, concept, techniques, materials—and all have impeccable workmanship.
Tekla McInerney for Lament
This book is a beautiful knitted work that hangs from the ceiling and drops into a custom made fabric bag. From Tekla’s artist statement, “There is comfort in the repetitive motion of knitting. It quietly consumes time and offers great satisfaction when the end of a skein is reached. There is no such neat end to mourning. Like the stream of words in a thesaurus—the endless linking of one word to the next—recovery from loss is an endless practice with no hope of mastery.” But, out of grief has come a lovely work. We were very excited last Friday when Tekla walked into the gallery and introduced herself. Turns out she flew in from Massachusetts just that day to join our First Friday celebration. And, it was her birthday to boot! Learn more about Tekla’s work here.
Elsi Vassdal Ellis for Notions & Fabrications | Remnants
Here at 23 Sandy we have been honored to have Elsi’s work in every single juried show that we have held since opening our doors in 2007. As usual, Elsi’s two works in Uncommon Threads are gorgeous, thought provoking and beautifully made. This book is “a fictional story about a struggling farmer’s wife’s life as expressed through the domestic arts of sewing, quilting and crocheting… this story had to be told in two separate volumes rather than one, that they should sit side by side, and it reflected the challenges of women of her generation.” Learn more about Notions & Fabrications | Remnants here. P.S. Watch for Elsi’s solo show here in the gallery in February of 2012.
Nanette Wylde for Between Us
Felting is a fascinating technique that I’ve never seen done quite so beautifully as in this book by California artist Nanette Wylde. She tells us “Interpersonal communication is a woolly fog of intentions and perceptions, interpretation and memory.” This is one book that you really should see in person. Felting must be a difficult medium to capture well in photographs because this book is so much more stunning than it looks on your little computer screen. Check it out here if you can’t make it to the gallery.
Congratulations to all three of these very talented artists!
Essays include:
John Bently on books and community; Earle D. Swope’s extraordinary account of how he came to be a book artist; an update on the work of the collaborative artists’ group AMBruno; a study by Eileen O’Keefe of Sarah Jacobs’ thoroughly absorbing – Drawn from the Inventory: the Notebooks of Elisabeth Faulhaber; Jackie Batey celebrates the 10th issue of Future Fantasteek!; Lawrence Upton has written on his extensive art collaboration with Guy Begbie; Davy & Kristin McGuire explain their beautiful performance piece The Icebook; Nicola Dale looks at the artistic potential of book destruction, and Radoslaw Nowakowski asks: Is a hypertext (artist’s) book possible? Linda Newington explores the book works of SALT + SHAW; Paulo Silveira reflects on the start of his recent academic project: The University and the Artist’s Book, and Reinhard Grüner shows us some of the very special presentation copies of artists’ books in his collection.
Artists’ pages by:
Amir Brito Cadôr, Eric Doeringer, Lara Durback, the Idaho Book Artist’s Guild, Susan Johanknecht, Paul Laidler, SALT + SHAW, Clare Thornton and Maria White. Cover design by Tom Sowden.