From Vox Magazine: Art between the bindings
- Candice Brew
- Oct 16, 2014
- 3 min read
Published in 10/16 print issue of Vox magazine and published on voxmagazine.com
An artist’s book isn’t merely a collection of words or images; it is an exhibit in your hands. Instead of photographs or paintings hung on a wall, these works of art are bound in a book. It is art itself, and each page is a part of a larger library.
Artists first began compiling their works into book form in the early 20th century, but digital advances have boosted the artist’s book’s presence in the modern art world. Digital, print-on-demand platforms have cleared a simpler, more affordable path for artists to create, publish and sell their books online. Blurb, an accessible book-making software site, is one such example.
This medium thrives in cities such as New York and Los Angeles, but the form has also made its way to Columbia.
Travis Shaffer, a visual artist and MU assistant professor, works within the artist’s book movement. He curated an artist’s book exhibition at the University of Kansas in 2013 and has published several of his own including Sorority Skin Tones and Reworded.
In Reworded, he pieces together 30 phrases from words that Ed Ruscha, an influential pop artist, painted. The resulting book was part of ABCED, a multi-volume series from members of the Artists’ Books Cooperative to celebrate Ruscha’s 75th birthday.
“I was like a little Ed Ruscha fanboy,” Shaffer says. “Ruscha said he wanted to be the Henry Ford of bookmaking. He had a desire to make this mass quantity of books that were so inexpensive everyone could have one.”
The books, in Shaffer’s estimation, are also an effort to offset the commercial side of the art community, populated only by those with access or of a certain class. “Unlike fine art, they’re very accessible and democratic,” he says.
In 2013, Travis Shaffer curated “A Fair” in Lawrence, Kan., which highlighted the resurgence of the artist’s book. Little Brown Mushroom, Artists’ Book Cooperative and Indie Photobook Library, three leading promotors of the medium, were exhibitors. The event exemplified the desire in contemporary photographic and artistic communities to celebrate and sustain artists’ books. Photo courtesy of Travis Shaffer.
The autonomy of the artist’s book is another appeal. In the book form, an artist isn’t bound to displaying work in an exhibition space, gallery, museum or studio.
“In a different way than a print in a frame, the book sort of being the work itself is free from … being skewed based on where it’s perceived,” Shaffer says.
Print-on-demand technologies have added another element to what an artist can do. The freedom to choose how many books are printed can liberate the artist from a creative restraint.
“If I can produce a work, and I can print it one at a time and decide whether or not it’s interesting, I’m much more likely to experiment or … do something that seems relatively absurd,” Shaffer says.
Another local artist taking heed of the print-on-demand movement is photographer Deanna Dikeman. Dikeman published Clothed for ABCED and 27 Good-byes, an award-winning book documenting moments of farewell with her parents. It is currently being exhibited at Duke University’s “A Survey of Documentary Styles in Early 21st Century Photobooks.”
Her photobook is a subset of the artist’s book. Flipping the pages mirrors the repetitive act of snapping shots of her parents. “It’s like a little curated collection [where] you want to say something, and you can use this book as a way to say that,” she says.
Like the rising popularity of old-school vinyl records, Shaffer says the burgeoning trend of the artist’s book might have to do with nostalgia.
“[The trend] reminds me of the Portlandia show, that 1890s song where they’re singing, they wish it was the late 1800s,” he says. As the world becomes more digitalized, there is a corresponding pull back toward the tangible forms of old, toward something like the artist’s book.
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