Library of Dust is a haunting photographic odyssey by David Maisel. The work depicts individual copper canisters, each containing the cremated remains of patients from the Oregon State Hospital. The patients died at the hospital between 1883 (the year the facility opened, when it was called the Oregon State Insane Asylum) and the 1970’s. All have remained unclaimed by their families.How did the title come about?During Maisel's first visit to the hospital a "young male prisoner in a blue jumpsuit, with his feet planted firmly outside the doorway, leans his upper body into the room, scans the cremated remains, and...
The Page Curler hits Seattle : Cara Barer Exhibit at Wessel & Lieberman
Carousel 25" x 25" Edition of 25Wessel & Lieberman Booksellers is pleased to announce an exhibition of the work of Cara Barer.The event will highlight the dynamic photographs the Houston-based artist and showcase her sculptural approach to the book.Shot on a black background, found books take on color and shape, elegantly transposed by the artist’s hands into recognizable forms. The dirtied, warped, and sometimes dyed leaves of text may become the wings of a butterfly, the gills of a mushroom, or the intricately symmetrical crystals of a newly formed snowflake.Two Dreams 14" x 14" Edition of 25Cara Barer studied Art...
André Kertész: On Reading
Academie Française, Paris (man on ladder reading). 1929For 50 years photographer Andre Kertész took pictures of people reading. His seminal book On Reading presents a series of these photographs taken by Kertész in Hungary, France, and the United States. It was first published in 1971, in New York, by Grossman Publishers and has recently been reissued by W.W. Norton.New York (boy eating icecream on pile of newspapers), October 12, 1944On Reading captures "readers in every conceivable place—on rooftops, in public parks, on crowded streets, waiting in the wings of the school play—are caught in a deeply personal, yet universal, moment....
Harrell Fletcher’s "American War"
In 2005 Harrell Fletcher spent a month in Vietnam as part of an international artists retreat.While there Fletcher spent a lot of time at The War Remnants Museum in Ho Chi Minh City, a memorial museum for what is referred to in Vietnam as The American War. The Museum used to be called The Museum of American War Crimes, then it was The War Crimes Museum then we got friendly with Vietnam again and it was renamed The War Remnants Museum.He says "I was so affected by what I saw at the museum that I went back several times and...
Beatrix Potter Rarities at BibliOdyssey
Spectacled Mouse Reading NewspaperPreviously unknown drawing dating from the first year of Potter's association with Hildesheimer & Faulkner greeting card manufacturers (1892). If your a Beatrix Potter, Peter Rabbit or Benjamin Bunny fan then peacay's recent post, Beatrix Potter Rarities, at BibliOdyssey is a must see. peacay features numerous rare Potter sketches, watercolors and drawings, many from her days as a greeting card illustrator before her huge success as a book illustrator.What is of particular interest here is that all images were culled from the archives of Sotheby's and Christie's and not from the digital archive of various library special...