Re: [BKARTS] BOOK_ARTS-L Digest - 17 Sep 2008 to 18 Sep 2008 (#2008-259)

[Norman Shapiro <ufemisms@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hello Laura,

I've been making copier printed 'book art' for some 35 + years. It was 
for me a sort of transgressive thing,  printed my editions as needed 
with a copier printer I leased and kept in my studio. The pen and ink 
drawings were replicated resized  and the layouts and printouts of my 
pages were done using  Aldus Pagemaker. As the years went by, my 
technology improved when it got affordable to upgrade. I remember 
getting software and a stylus for making drawings  directly on the 
computer screen.

Having a scanner was a big help. And Adobe Photoshop.  Later Adobe took 
over Pagemaker and with bells and whistles renamed it  Indesign.

I always printed out my editions as copier masters and ran off as many 
as I thought I needed.  Mail art required some 25 to 50 copier prints. 
I did not know or care that people at the Center of Book Arts were 
looking down their noses at me.   I wasn't  breaking any of MY 
precedents. It was all so new to me that i made it up as I went along. 
The contents of what my books were about was taboo. And I wasn't about 
to go public indiscrimately with it. Not when i was earning my living 
teaching in the public schools and hoping eventually to collect my 
pension when I retired.   And I was also very certain that my 'form' 
followed 'function'.  That is I was not having to make editions that 
would crowd me out of house and home the way may painting were doing.  
As to the appropriateness of the route I chose to making multiples and 
keeping down my costs, The style and look of my books seemed about 
right for the Adults Only clientele I was pretending to be making it 
for.

I disdained the costly sort of art papers and going all  artsy craftsy 
as to bindings. Mostly, my archival works on paper were in plastic page 
protectors and eventually come full flower as book art when I got an HP 
laser color printer/scanner. I now am printing my books on much larger 
papers than during those early years. I can say without being too 
immodest that many of the archives keep abreast of me. And my vintage 
works and my recent works in some rather  serious collections here and 
abroad.

The question as to my books being 'bookart':  It was  because it was 
intended that it be 'art'. As such, it was about censorship. For 
curators and librarians of university collections, art  museum 
libraries - and public libraries, the question  always  about my books 
having an esthetic appropriate to the subject (erotic and pornographic) 
genre I was engaged in doing.  No one I came to talked about whether my 
 papers were acid free or my choice of bindings or it having to be 
letter press or offset or serigraphy, etc.  I was using what I had and 
could afford and did the job.  Such matters didn't seem to make an iota 
of difference as to why my work was there in those collections.

Fundamental questions I address are:  Which who am I in this work that 
does me?  Does it matter as to my speaking of this or of that?  Show, 
tell, what fantasies and to who? At what cost and can I and they afford 
it?  And so what if it is only to some ostensible posterity? Each is a 
one-of-a-kind pretending to pass for a multiple, and let the  relevance 
of it to me in the here and now govern the doing. I've not say or 
control over where it goes after I'm gone.

Norman Shapiro

PS
Just one more thing: I'd rather my books not be a 'collectible'.  Not 
be for someone whose concern is in being a trader, making a killing 
using art for gold or an admission pass to exclusive and very elite 
private clubs.

197-776-6758
http://artasidentity.blogspot.com
http://ufemisms.com

PO Box 105
Long Beach, New York, 11516

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