These works focus on language and decipherment through inventive imagery, typography, design, printing, and bindings, exploring how language is key to our respective cultural identities. Typographical innovation ranges from Islamic calligraphy in Aly’s Marginalia 1 to Cummins’ typescript in Re-Start to Drucker’s feminist theoretical approach. Abstract words and images come together to tell stories such as in Appel’s wordless poems and Rasheed’s mashup of writings, poems, and texts from various sources.
Decipherment is evident in the two contemporary codices—Codex Espangliensis and Reconstruction Project—that draw from many sources including Mayan texts. History is a focus through the works by Davidson and Laxson. Language and knowledge are central to Mickelson’s work, which draws on her Oneida heritage, and Meador’s photographic focus on Tibetan books.
Islam Mahmoud Mohamed Aly. Marginalia 1. Iowa City, IA: Self-published, 2013, Artists Proof #2 of an edition of 20.
Laser cut Arabic calligraphy. Handmade flax, abaca and cotton paper. Coptic and Ethiopian binding with Plexiglass covers.
Islam Aly is an Egyptian-born book artist, curator and professor:
”All of Marginalia’s calligraphy was taken from a book … “The Splendor of Islamic Calligraphy.” … Most of the calligraphy was Arabic, but some were Persian and Turkish (using Arabic letters and different calligraphic styles). I was interested in how the calligraphy looked on the paper. … I was looking essentially for the aesthetics and arrangement more than the legibility or meaning of the original text.”
Email from Islam Aly, October 11, 2021.
Rosaire Appel. wordless (poems). New York, NY: Press Rappel, 2013, revised edition, first published in 2009.
Appel is a visual artist whose work includes asemic writing and music, comics, poetry, and graphic novellas.
“Between writing (language) and drawing is another area, an open, uncodified territory that has not yet been fully explored. A few writers and artists are beginning to use the term ‘asemic writing,’ which basically means ‘having no semantic content,’ in conjunction with this kind of work. wordless (poems) is a collection of visual, abstract compositions.”
Maureen Cummins in collaboration with Iraqi artist Yaroub Al-Obaidi. Re-Start. High Falls, NY: Maureen Cummins, 2021, no. 4 of an edition of 10, signed by the artist.
All text was hand-typed onto transparent vellum sheets bound into vintage aluminum binders.
Maureen Cummins is an American artist who has created many limited-edition artists’ books and founded Inanna Press. In this work she collaborated with fellow artist Yaroub Al-Obaidi to describe his experience of being resettled in multiple countries, comparing the experience to a broken computer that needs repeated restarting. Cummins used the recorded text by rearranging and repeating sections again and again replicating the sense of frustration reflecting Al-Obaidi’s experiences. The two artists met through the Friends, Peace and Sanctuaryproject hosted by Swarthmore College.
Laura Davidson. Useful Knowledge. Boston, MA: Laura Davidson, 1998, no. 21 of 25 copies, signed by the artist.
”Inspired by a metal book I found in Lucca decades ago… with unusual letter forms that have had a major influence in my thinking about art making - patterns, letter forms, text blocks, etc. … At the time I created this book, I had been researching early printed books at the Houghton Library and the Boston Athenaeum. … The books became purely visual objects to experience, rather than something that needed to be read to be understood. …”
Emails from Laura Davidson, August 2023.
Johanna Drucker. The History of the/My Word: Fragments of a Testimonial to History, Some Lived and Realized Moments Open to Claims of Memory. New York, NY: Druckwerk & Granary Books, 1995, 1st trade edition. Alternative title: History of the/my world.
Johanna Drucker is an artist, professor, scholar, and writer known for her work in visual poetry and experimental typography. She has written, illustrated, designed, printed, and published many books focused on language. In Drucker’s words:
“Several themes interweave in this book: a feminist rewriting of the history of the world, an opposition between official history and personal memory, a critique of feminist theoretical attitudes towards language as patriarchal, and all sorts of graphical and textual puns and play.”
Guillermo Gómez-Peña, Enrique Chagoya, and Felicia Rice. Codex Espangliensis: from Columbus to the Border Patrol. San Francisco and Santa Cruz, CA: City Lights Books/Moving Parts Press, 2000, reprint of 1998 edition.
Ruth Laxson. A Hundred Years of: LEX FLEX. Atlanta, GA: Nexus Press, 2003.
Silver stamped cover, offset printed on Mohawk Vellum.
Laxson (1924-2019) was a painter, printmaker, sculptor, and maker of artists’ books. In this book, she focused on language to reflect the kaleidoscopic and tumultuous events spanning one hundred years of human intellectual activity (1900 to 2000). Laxson created a timeline of technological innovations and events intertwined with her personal experiences. The images are hand-drawn, cut from paper, photographed, collaged, and digitally created in this offset printed book. This is the last book published by Nexus Press.
Clifton Meador. Palpung Parkhang. Chicago, IL: Clifton Meador and the Center for Book and Paper, Columbia College, 2012.
Offset printed with letterpress printed dust jacket.
I have collected several books by Clifton Meador as I admire his meditative approach that slows the viewer down to absorb each page. His love of books and libraries and his exquisite use of photography is well encapsulated in his series of books devoted to Tibetan books and their production.
“Meador combines writing, photography, printmaking, and design to make books that explore how the narratives of culture, history, and place are the basis for identity. This artists’ book is one of three based on his visit to study traditional Tibetan book production and presents photographs taken in the Palpung Monastery in Tibet. Each spread consists of one numbered photograph matching a note detailing what the artist saw. The footnotes create a dual narrative of the artist’s experience and the converse experience of the monastery’s inhabitants.”
Erin Mickelson. Trace. Santa Fe, NM: Broken Cloud Press, 2022, no. 2 of an edition of 7, signed and numbered by the artist.
Accordion, archival pigment paper, Freight Big Pro font. Text based on the Oneida language.
One of my collecting areas of interest is historic and contemporary Native art, which connects with my interest in language. Erin Mickelson is an Oneida artist and graphic designer whose work includes printmaking, bookbinding, mixed media, and artist books published under the imprint Broken Cloud Press. She writes:
“Language is a body spoken, written, signed, danced. It can be lost, broken, and revived. This is a celebration, a reconnection.” Trace is dedicated to Gertie Jordan, Mickelson’s great-grandmother, “who kept her language and survived her years at the Carlisle Indian School.”
Sabra Moore. Reconstruction Project. Brooklyn, NY: Self-published, 1984, color Xerox with gessoed cover, edition of 30.
Created by Sabra Moore working with Emma Amos, Frances Buschke, Camille Billops, Josely Carvalho, Catherine Correa, Chris Costan, Colleen Cutschall, Sharon Gilbert, Kathy Grove, Marina Gutiérrez, Virginia Jaramillo, Kazuko Miyamoto, Helen Oji, Catalina Parra, Linda Peer, Liliana Porter, Jaune Quick-To-See Smith, Nancy Spero, and Holly Zox.
Kameelah Janan Rasheed. No New Theories. New York, NY: Printed Matter, 2019.
Rasheed’s book brings together key elements of this exhibition: language and knowledge. Her collages comprise texts, tweets, and other forms of social media.
“In this book, Rasheed freely assembles her own writing, autocorrect algorithms, and Oulipian poems … alongside visuals drawn from her personal image archive, pop culture, zoological journals, quranic verses, and other sources. ... At the heart of No New Theories is an expansive interview between Rasheed and Jessica Lynne ... The conversation [is] constructed through a layering process … with annotations, citations, and excerpted texts from writers Samuel R. Delany, Alexis Pauline Gumbs, Emily Dickinson, and others.”
