| Title | The Dawn and Fados |
| Artist / Creator | Poppy Dully |
| Place of Publication | Portland, Oregon |
| Publication Date | 2011 |
| Medium / Materials | Vintage 1898 printed cloth bound book cover with gold trim; original book pages printed with oil based etchings; pages glued to Arches 150 paper, folded accordion style and glued into cover. Bound with original cover, 10 monotype printed images. |
| Number of Pages | 20 |
| Dimensions (WxHxD) | 6 x 8 x .5 inches |
| Edition Size | Unique Altered Book |
| Signed & Numbered | Yes |
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The artist tells us, "In my development of altered books, I seek books and films that share some type of relationship. In this book, I combined passages from a 19th century play, The Dawn, with images of contemporary people in a busy city, going to work or school in the morning from the film Fados. Both the 19th century play and the 19th century Portuguese music tradition, Fado, speak to social injustice and the decline of life in the country."
The 1898 play The Dawn (Les Aubes) was written by Emile Verhaeren (a Belgian Poet, 1855-1916) and translated from the French by Arthur Symons (a British poet, 1865-1945). The play which is written in a mixture of prose and verse was considered very experimental in France at the time. Both Verhaeren and Symons were involved with the Symbolist School.
The images were taken from Fados, a film directed by Carlos Saura in 2007 and features the musicians, singers and dancers of this unique Portuguese music tradition. Fado means fate or destiny and the music became popular in the 19th century. The songs can be about anything, but they follow a certain structure and are often about mournful times and the life of the poor. Amalia Rodrigues “The Queen of Fado” has made this music genre well known today.
Artist Bio
Artist Statement Poppy Dully’s interest in combining monotypes and book pages into altered books started from four sources: painting mentor Leigh Hyams’ pen and ink artist’s books; William Kentridge’s films and drawings on book pages; the films of French film director Agnes Varda; and a long ago college art assignment to study film for compositional references. When Poppy creates an altered book with monotypes she looks for a book that will relate in its size, format, and text with the film images. With a vintage set of psychology textbooks, Poppy began her experiment with altered books. Using a digital camera, she photographs scenes from the film that seem most eventful. From these photos, she selects 8 to 10 that can tell the story visually. These photos are her source material for the monotypes which she creates by drawing on the plate and then rolling and wiping off oil based ink on the reverse side of plexi-glass plates before printing on the book pages that she has separated from the book. She backs the dried monotypes onto accordion pages that she reassembles in the book’s original cover. Poppy continues to explore the relationship of storytelling in film and books in her altered books. Sometimes it is the discovery of a second hand book that connects her to a film and other times it is the moving images of the film that connects her to a book. Artist Biography Poppy Dully (b.1947, San Francisco, CA) is a Portland, Oregon painter, printmaker, and book artist. She works in acrylics, oil, pen, and ink on a variety of surfaces. She studied design and cultural anthropology as an undergraduate at University of California, Berkeley, received a Masters in Public Health from University of California Los Angeles and worked for over 20 years in fundraising and non profit management in Portland. She has shown her paintings and prints around the Northwest since 1998. Poppy’s altered book with monotypes, After Cleo, 5 to 7, was exhibited in the College Book Art Association nationally juried show at the 23 Sandy Gallery in December 2009.