Sandpaper from Stairs: Indigenous Asperity (Artist's Book Series XV)

Asperity is a dangerous book - especially to the other books in the collection. Instead of paper, the book is printed on actual sandpaper. And a rather coarse sandpaper at that.

The work itself contrasts facts and figures which contrast Western ideas and indigenous knowledge. The item was sold in a plastic wrapper to keep it and others safe.

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David Stairs
Asperity (1989)
Portland, OR, Self-Published
Various facts and figures which contrast Western ideas with indigenous knowledge are printed on sandpaper with string binding
Cost: $6.00 | x48027 | Joan Flasch Artists' Book Collection

Katz and Mice: A Winter's Tale (Artist's Book Series XIV)

A lovely little book that tells the tale, in block prints, of two mice, a fight, and a snowman. My copy came in a red envelope (inside a plastic bag with a snowflake sticker to close it). I'm not certain if that is all the artist's original design. The packet also included a note on the artist:

"Babette Katz is a printmaker and maker of artist's books. Her artist's books are in the library collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Museum of Modern Art, among others."

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Babette Katz
A Winter's Tale (1990)
Marmaroneck, NY, Self-Published
Small printed illustrations of winter scenes; includes a large red envelope
Cost: $3.00 | x05119

I voted in Arlington, Virginia today

Acrylic Virgin, from Bug's Lunch Press, Burnsville, NC (Artist's Book Series XIII)

Brown's Acrylic Virgin (1993) is one of the more complex works in the collection. A combination of a variety of printing processes, the highlights are the small prints that are mounted on the pages. This is copy 23 out of 100 and signed by the artist.

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Barron Brown

Acrylic Virgin (1993)
Burnsville, NC, Bug's Lunch Press
Photographs, prints, Xerography and writing; signed, 23/100
Cost: $7.50 | x41411

Lufthansa 414: MUC to IAD

"Hey dese drawings are really lousy!" Hell Yes! says P. Shaw (Artist's Book Series XII)

... or so says the artist, P. Shaw. This great little book reminded me a bit of the Bazooka Joe comics inside bubblegum. Printed on heavy paper with folds and a staple binding, the brightly colored images play on artists' insecurity about their works.

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Hell Yes! (1992)

Boston, Self-Published
Small printed book with neon colors with folded pages and staple bind
Cost: $2.00 | x41401

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Good morning on my last day in Florence / "It was pleasant to wake up in Florence, to open the eyes upon a bright bare room ..." E.M. Forster

"It was pleasant to wake up in Florence, to open the eyes upon a bright bare room, with a floor of red tiles which look clean though they are not; with a painted ceiling whereon pink griffins and blue amorini sport in a forest of yellow violins and bassoons. It was pleasant, too, to fling wide the windows, pinching the fingers in unfamiliar fastenings, to lean out into sunshine with beautiful hills and trees and marble churches opposite, and close below, the Arno, gurgling against the embankment of the road." - E.M. Forster, A Room with a View (1908)

I didn't have a "room with a view" (my window looked out on a small side street just off the Piazza Santa Croce), but a very good room it was. The Dante Room (only room on the ground floor) of the Hotel Santa Croce. All the staff at the hotel were fantastic and the location couldn't have worked out better for both work and fun.


w.hotelsantacroce.it/

Lufthansa 106: FRA to MUC

Gate A22

Incipit Vita Nova ... so long Florence

In that part of the book of my memory before the which is little that can be read, there is a rubric, saying, Incipit Vita Nova. Under such rubric I find written many things; and among them the words which I purpose to copy into this little book; if not all of them, at the least their substance.

In quella parte del libro de la mia memoria dinanzi a la quale poco si potrebbe leggere, si trova una rubrica la quale dice: Incipit vita nova. Sotto la quale rubrica io trovo scritte le parole le quali è mio intendimento d'assemplare in questo libello; e se non tutte, almeno la loro sentenzia.

- La Vita Nuova, Dante

A very successful trip ... and now, off to the airport ...

Buona notte, Firenze ... until the morning ...

"I got lost in Florence at nine o'clock, one night, and staid lost in that labyrinth of narrow streets and long rows of vast buildings that look all alike, until toward three o'clock in the morning. It was a pleasant night and at first there were a good many people abroad, and there were cheerful lights about. Later, I grew accustomed to prowling about mysterious drifts and tunnels and astonishing and interesting myself with coming around corners expecting to find the hotel staring me in the face, and not finding it doing any thing of the kind." - Mark Twain, Innocents Abroad (1869)

Well, I can't say that I ever got lost again after the first morning in Florence, of course my circle was a pretty small of the historic old city, Ciao, til the morning.

Here's a few 21:00ish shots as I walked back across the Arno to the Hotel Santa Croce:

Henry James on the "extravagant" figure of Dante as depicted at Santa Croce

"The place is the great Florentine Valhalla, the final home or memorial harbour of the native illustrious dead, but that consideration of it would take me far. It must be confessed moreover that, between his coarsely-imagined statue out in front and his horrible monument in one of the aisles, the author of The Divine Comedy, for instance, is just hereabouts rather an extravagant figure". - Henry James, Italian Hours (1909)

I must confess that James is spot on in his assessment of the sculptural renditions of Dante that have become the model for how we picture him. I can't imagine that he's always that stern or unhappy looking as depicted at Santa Croce!

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Detail of Dante's Tomb, Santa Croce

The great Florentines in Santa Croce, with some side comments by Mark Twain

One of my main goals in Florence was to visit Santa Croce and see the tombs and monuments to great Florentines. Santa Croce did not disappoint. From outside on the piazza, it's hard to grasp its size, inside it's immense. Though Santa Maria Novella is still probably my favorite of the "big three" in Florence, Santa Croce, whose bells I heard at night and which I passed every day, remains special.

Here's some comments from Mark Twain, from Innocents Abroad (1869) on the monuments of Santa Croce:

Caption

Galileo
That we had lived to see his dust in honored sepulchure in the church of Santa Croce we owed to a society of literati, and not to Florence or her rulers.
















Dante
We saw Dante's tomb in that church, also, but we were glad to know that his body was not in it; that the ungrateful city that had exiled him and persecuted him would give much to have it there, but need not hope to ever secure that high honor to herself.












Michelangelo, Machiavelli, Rossini (not Raphael)

"We went to the Church of Santa Croce, from time to time, in Florence, to weep over the tombs of Michael Angelo, Raphael and Machiavelli, (I suppose they are buried there, but it may be that they reside elsewhere and rent their tombs to other parties--such being the fashion in Italy,) and between times we used to go and stand on the bridges and admire the Arno."

(from left: Machiavelli, Michelangelo, Rossini)

Henry James on the Duomo in Florence: "for all its solemn hugeness, strikes the same note of would-be reasoned elegance and cheer"

The Cathedral, externally, for all its solemn hugeness, strikes the same note of would-be reasoned elegance and cheer; it has conventional grandeur, of course, but a grandeur so frank and ingenuous even in its parti-pris. It has seen so much, and outlived so much, and served so many sad purposes, and yet remains in aspect so full of the fine Tuscan geniality, the feeling for life, one may almost say the feeling for amusement, that inspired it.

 Henry James, Italian Hours (1909)