ARTIST'S BOOKS

On March 5th 2007, a car bomb was exploded on al-Mutanabbi Street in Baghdad, “street of the booksellers”, killing more than 30 people and wounding over 100. Al-Mutanabbi Street held bookstores, outdoor bookstalls and cafes and was the heart and soul of the Baghdad literary and intellectual community. In July 2010, Beau Beausoleil put out a call for book artists to join ‘An Inventory Of Al-Mutanabbi Street’, a project to “re-assemble” some of the “inventory” of the reading material that was lost in the car bombing, creating books that reflect both the strength and fragility of books, and showing the endurance of the ideas within them. In “Street of Booksellers”, (wood cover, linocut, 6.5" x 6", 2012) the voices of long-dead poets continue to speak to us, from the "heads, tails, spines and bodies" of books- burned, broken, bulldozed and buried, on Al-Mutanabbi Street, and other streets beloved of writers and readers.




	S L I D E S H O W

	“Cry Uncle” an expression used by bullies to demand submission of the other, is the title of this 23-page accordion fold book, a graphic response to man’s inhumanity to man in Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo, and Bagram. In 2009, I wrote, designed and illustrated “Cry Uncle,” which begins in the Orwellian “Ministry of Love,” “where they had ways to make you talk.” A canvas sack holds a portfolio covered with thin, creased, fragile-looking Nepalese paper resembling human skin. 11 images carved from 18” x 24” linoleum blocks, and the larger letterpress text from old wooden letters, were printed on translucent, handmade Japanese paper, allowing the viewer to glimpse the shadow image of what came before. My work focuses on telling stories in pictures. Political subject matter, not only to protest and document, intrigues me as an exploration of human nature. The way type looks and sounds as it becomes a character’s voice interests me, as well as how language changes meaning by modifying scale or font. The zippered red mouth on the sack that holds the book is the beginning and end of the story; the torturer’s lips are sealed. When the book is unfolded, it is over 40 feet long.