the end of the book.... (again)

More from This is not the end of the book; by Umberto Eco and Jean Claude Carriere.  I am still thinking about it and re-reading parts of it.  Background:  It was recently translated from the French and I picked it up when I was in London - in the bookshop at the British Library. (Oh - such a place!) The book is full of the enthusiasm of these two great thinkers...for all things - but especially all things bookish. Yes they can sound "pontificatey"  but I think they've earned it.

This idea of "the end of the book" has been going on for a few decades now.  My MFA thesis exhibit was (coughs) in 1987 and titled "Books in Space."  It was my reflecting on the "new" idea that books were disappearing, as well as how we navigate "different kinds" of space (ex. family space, academic space, community space).  I was beginning to explore calling into question (among other things) the nature of just what it was that constituted a book, or reading for that matter...as well as what was happening to books.  The idea of "books in space" came from the initial thinking and research - my outreach to astronauts - asking them what books they would take into space.  The only one who answered me was Sally Ride, who said she would take "The Tao of Pooh."

“But what is a book? And what will change if we read onscreen rather than by turning the pages of a physical object? What will we gain, and more importantly, what will we lose? Old-fashioned habits, perhaps. A certain sense of the sacred that has surrounded the book in a civilisation that has made it our holy of holies. A peculiar intimacy between the author and reader, which the context of hypertextuality is bound to damage. A sense of existing in a self-contained world that the book and, along with it, certain ways of reading used to represent.” ― Jean-Philippe de Tonnac, This Is Not the End of the Book

Anyone involved in book arts - making, teaching or critiquing - is very aware what is meant by "reading."  And it has little to do with words on a page.  It goes back to that question I was thinking about in 1987 - how DO we navigate different kinds of space?  How do we read form, materiality, the way text is place on a page?  It is so much more than content - it is more akin to what Barthes wrote about in The Pleasure of the Text;

Thus what I enjoy in a narrative is not directly its content or even its structure, but rather the abrasions I impose upon the fine surface:  I read on, I skip, I look up, I dip in again. Which has nothing to do with the deep laceration the text of bliss inflicts upon language itself, and not upon the simple simple temporality of its reading. 

When someone hands me an artists' book for the first time - it is like beginning a journey.  The way it is built - the way it smells and the sound of the pages when I turn them.  Are there surprises?  I love surprises.  I feel this way about reading any new book -- always have.  Ahhh I'm starting to ramble now -- next post will try for more clarity.

Read this rock - Black River Harbor, Lake Superior

On Gratitude and Sabbaticals

Picture it.  This morning driving to the library - a regular occurrence if uninterrupted internet is needed - I was looking up at the sky at an eagle soaring overhead and nearly smushed a wild turkey meandering across the road.  This image, my friends, is a profound life truth -although I am at a loss yet to put it into language.

But it seems an apt story for the first "official" day of my sabbatical year - even though I have been enjoying the concept since May.

Sabbatical or a sabbatical (from Latin sabbaticus, from Greek sabbatikos, from Hebrew shabbat, i.e., Sabbath, literally a "ceasing") is a rest from work, or a break, often lasting from two months to a year. The concept of sabbatical has a source in shmita, described several places in the Bible Leviticus 25 for example, where there is a commandment to desist from working the fields in the seventh year. In the strict sense, therefore, a sabbatical lasts a year.  (Wikipedia)

The idea of rest - other than a rest from the grinding down that a 15 week semester entails - is not really the focus of my sabbatical.  Nor should it be.  The idea is the bliss of uninterrupted work.

Paul Cronin begins his book, Werner Herzog:  A Guide for the Perplexed (conversations with Paul Cronin) with a quote from William Faulkner:

"An artist is a creature driven by demons.  He doesn't know why they choose him and he's usually too busy to wonder why."

The process Herzog describes is a familiar one, in terms of often being assaulted by ideas.

The problem isn’t coming up with ideas, it is how to contain the invasion. My ideas are like uninvited guests. They don’t knock on the door; they climb in through the windows like burglars who show up in the middle of the night and make a racket in the kitchen as they raid the fridge. 

I don’t sit and ponder which one I should deal with first. The one to be wrestled to the floor before all others is the one coming at me with the most vehemence. I have, over the years, developed methods to deal with the invaders as quickly and efficiently as possible, though the burglars never stop coming. You invite a handful of friends for dinner, but the door bursts open and a hundred people are pushing in. You might manage to get rid of them, but from around the corner another fifty appear almost immediately... Finishing a film is like having a great weight lifted from my shoulders. It’s relief, not necessarily happiness. But you relish dealing with these “burglars.” I am glad to be rid of them after making a film or writing a book. The ideas are uninvited guests, but that doesn’t mean they aren’t welcome. 

It seems to me that I often use teaching as a way to push my ideas "out the door."  This is not always the best thing to do - and I have plenty of colleagues who manage to maintain their studio practice AND teach.  But that has always been difficult for me.  I love teaching - and students are always the most interesting people - I also love the institution I teach at, MIAD. This is my 20th year there.  (I guess I'm staying.)  So for me, a sabbatical year is a way to let all of those "uninvited guests" in from the journals and books and sketches they have been inhabiting, and deal with them.

At the present I'm sequestered on the edge of the Hiawatha National Forest very near to Les Cheneaux Islands.  Surrounded by fields of Queen Anne's Lace and fir trees I am working and working and reading and thinking and working.  It is incredibly wonderful.

              

Teachers

I recently completed MOOC on Coursera  through Duke University that was spearheaded by Cathy Davidson called "The Future of (Mostly) Higher Education."  Reflecting back on the experience  - I am conflicted about MOOC's as a learning platform - like everything else they have pros and cons.  They are messy and often difficult to wade through - especially if you have a few thousand course-mates from all walks of life, education backgrounds and different skill sets with the language the course is being given in.  This is also what makes them incredibly interesting!!

The future of higher ed is wide open  - technology offering new ways of establishing connections and delivering information.  Although face to face learning and guiding students through feedback may still be in many minds (including mine) the most effective way of delivering educational content - it may very well be a luxury in the future for some.  As we continue to defund public education and the cost of obtaining a private education continue to rise - it is difficult to see clearly where this leads us - but it does not seem to bode well.

I recommend HASTAC (Humanities, Arts, Science, Technology and Collaboratory) to anyone
who is interested in these topics.  Educator, parent or citizen - there are a myriad of things there to ponder and be informed about.  This is THE place (in my opinion) where the dialogue is taking place about learning and technology - where ideas are being shared and debated.  If you are an educator, this is not the time (as you likely know by now unless you have been teaching under a rock) to run from re-tooling your skill set and deciding which of the new technologies work best for you and your students.  There are so many options -- and they change and morph so quickly -- that it is great to have a place to turn to to educate yourself about them and discuss their use with others.

The Wordle visualization at the top of this post was created with the first 15 hours of answers to "Who's Your Favorite Teacher and Why" which was one of the forum prompts for the aforementioned course.  There were HUNDREDS of responses, and comments on those responses  -- and comments on those comments. They were written and spoken.  The responses were thoughtful and for the most part heartfelt.  Encouragement, compassion, ability to maintain interest, facilitating learning, challenging, guiding, fairness were words used over and over again.  Certainly as I thought of my own response - those were the things that I thought of.

It has been a great gift throughout my life to have known and studied with many exceptional teachers - both formally and informally.  Still, I knew immediately who I would write about when I read the question.  Barbara Cervenka was my first art teacher in high school.  So much of the foundation of how I think, my studio practice and my outlook on the world have been shaped by knowing and working with her. Not only is she an exceptional artist.  She is an exceptional human being.  Below is an image from her series of galaxy paintings.  She writes;

"[these paintings..] are based on photographs brought by the Hubble Space Telescope.  We are the first generation to see these images, to be able to look back so far in time and space.  The universe revealed to us is beautiful - light storms exploding billions of years ago, millions of galaxies, the birth of stars.  These star maps show us nearly unbelievable depths of time and space, yet they coexist with the minute daily miracles of earth - the opening of flowers, the symmetry of plants, the perfect geometry of skeleton and shell, the fragile monuments hand-built on earth.  In the dark mirrors of these paintings we too are reflected.  I painted these pieces as a meditation, a contemporary form of "illumination" and a celebration of the light that has come to us these days as a gift" 

                                                          Starfield 11-Omega Centauri -2011 / watercolor on arches 24 x 36"

Most recently she has mounted a nationally touring exhibit, Bandits and Heroes / Poets and Saints, through her work with an organization that she founded with her friend and colleague, Mame Jackson:  ConVida.  The exhibit began in Detroit at the Charles H. Wright Museum of African American History and is currently in Chicago at the DuSable Museum of African American History until August 17 of this year.  If you are in the Chicago area --- you should take a look.

ALTERED BOOKS: ONE HIT WONDERS?

New book in the mail today, ART MADE FROM BOOKS, with a preface by Brian Dettmer and an introduction by Alyson Kuhn.  I haven't really had time to look at it thoroughly, but it reminds me of a question that I have debated with Max Yela on occasion.  Are altered books one hit wonders?  Or are they - as the title of this book seems to imply,  not really book art, but rather art made from books.  It is a fine distinction and perhaps not one that many people would care about.  But for Max, who (thankfully) grows and maintains a large collection of book art and for me - who teaches and considers these questions (see what book artists think about?) it is an interesting idea and worth some consideration.

 Brian Dettmer

Do It Yourself

2009

Altered Set of handyman books

9" x 31-1/2" x 4-1/2"

In a Spring 2007 article in BONEFOLDER, Jen Thomas writes about the art of Melissa Jay Craig saying. "...she studied under Ray Martin and Joan Flasch, both of whom encouraged
Craig to explore the creative potential within the book form. Soon her pieces evolved from traditional book structures into stylized book objects. She took these book objects a step further and created an installation titled Library. Without a universally accepted critical definition of book arts, Craig was
free to let her ideas materialize without the limitations that painting had previously presented.
Though Craig felt free to experiment with the book form, not all those working within the field of book arts recognized her work as artist’s books. The critic Clive Philpot once derided Craig’s work during his lecture at an artists’ book event at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago. Craig says, “I had some of my altered books there and he referred to them directly, saying, ‘These are NOT books. They are fetishistic objects.’ Knowing his particular bias, I felt honored to be included in his condemnation. I do make objects. Books are objects. What makes them fetishistic is their inherent resonance, the ability to communicate on a visceral, nonverbal level. So, like the issue of beauty, I can embrace that description; fetishistic objects carry an implicit communicative power. They can be read.”

Pulp Fiction, Melissa Jay Craig

Yes, they can be read.  But there is reading and then there is reading.

(....to be continued)