West Bengali scroll painters Moyna and Joydeb Chitrakar created this scroll to commemorate the 2004 earthquake and tsunami in the Indian Ocean that killed over 230,000 people. Reported as the first Patua scroll to be rendered in book form, it is a fable on narrative graphic panels stitched together to form a scroll. The book brings together Patua traditional practices of scroll painting and nomadic performances when songwriter and artist travel from home to home showing pictures and singing their stories ranging from storytelling to the news.
Brian Dettmer. The Migration of Symbols. Brooklyn, NY: Unique sculpted book, acrylic varnish, 2014.
Intervention of a 1956 edition of Count Goblet d’Alviella’s book of the same title (1894).
“The original book is an illustrated study of the migration and mutation of symbols through a wide range of cultures. … The book has undergone an archeological excavation, exposing a dense cluster of fragmented symbols and ideas … The resulting intervention presents the depth and variety of the cultures it represents …”
Email from Brian Dettmer, August 16, 2023.
Evelyn Eller. Language Collage #951. New York, NY: Self-published, 2016.
Collage of copy prints based on images from Origins of the Book: Egypt’s Contribution to the Development of the Book from Papyrus to Codex by Mohamed A. Hussein (1972).
”I work with images that incorporate the use of language, maps, photographs, music and my own drawings. I utilize fragments of script in order to show the interrelatedness of different cultures and their commonality. … I manipulate the text in a purely visual form as pattern, without regard to its meaning; in these works I see the words as visual abstractions.”
From artist’s website, December 2023.
Mark Katzman and Susan Kress. INoN. Atlanta, GA: Nexus Press, 1990, no. 108 of an edition of 500.
Scroll on wooden handles with ribbon ties.
Artist, writer, and musician Mark Katzman collaborated with artist Susan Kress to create this scroll printed on both sides and illustrated with hand and symbols and text:
“A post-apocalyptic religious scroll from the new millennium. The three-foot long maplike text combines ancient, astronomical, and new age theologies offering a universal spiritual journey.”
From 1977-2003, Nexus Press was devoted to the production and publication of experimental artists’ books. Like the other Nexus book on display by Ruth Laxson, I included it for its use of language and symbolism in an innovative framework.
JoAnne McFarland. The Storyteller Dress. Brooklyn, NY: Self-published, 2023.
Unique collage of pages from French magazine L’Illustration, 1900; sheet music from the 1900s; pages from Sears and Roebuck Catalog, 1902; botanical print, rice, and origami papers.
McFarlandis an artist, poet, curator, and artistic director of Artpoetica Project Space in Brooklyn which exhibits works focusing on the intersection of language and visual representation.
“In my dress collages I use antique botanical prints, turn-of-the-century newspaper and magazine ads, sheet music, and sepia colored rice papers that suggest bark, wood, earth and skin, particularly African-American skin.”
