by | November 7, 2011

Facsimile Talk Wednesday, Nov. 9

Join us at the Sloane Art Library this week for another facsimile talk!

This week’s talk will feature Professor Dorothy Verkerk and PhD. candidate Krysta Black as they speak on the Ashburnham Pentateuch and the Leon Bible of 960.  Both speakers will be presenting facsimiles of their respective manuscripts from the Rare Book Collection in Wilson Special Collections Library.  As it is a facsimile event, this will be a hands-on experience, so be sure to come have some “face time” with these manuscripts.

Again, the information is:
Wednesday, 6 pm
November 9th
Sloane Art Library

Hope to see you there!

-Eva

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Filed under Events, Illuminated manuscripts, Manuscript facsimiles

by | October 28, 2011

Filing Cabinet as Treasure Chest: Diving into the Artists’ File

There’s an unassuming row of grey filing cabinets along the back wall of the Art Library’s first floor.  In their quiet nook beside the scanners, these cabinets house a veritable treasure trove of artifacts.

Image copyright Creative Commons, Origamidon, South Burlington, VT, 2004.

Packed away, you’ll find the creative detritus of over 7,000 artists – including exhibition invitations, small catalogs, newspaper clippings, and posters.  You almost expect to happen upon a lucky shoelace or a tube of Pantone 292.

The collection of ephemera in the artists’ file has been built up over the course of several decades. Most of the materials come to us via UNC’s Ackland Art Museum, but some also come directly from artists themselves and other donors. No matter the source, the file offers the researcher or browser an opportunity to come across unique and unexpected artifacts.

The materials are mostly loose in the file cabinets – no library of congress call numbers to tame the riotous explosions of colorful paper.  Every artist with three or more “objects” has been given a file folder with a name label as well as a record in the online catalog.  For artists with fewer than three artifacts, each floats freely, filed in alphabetical order by the artist’s last name.

This relative chaos is no tragedy, though;  in fact, it derailed my own searching in the best possible way.   Having read through the list of all artists represented in the file I thought I knew exactly what I was looking for.  But once I dove into the packed cabinets, I quickly stumbled on work by over a dozen artists that weren’t on my list.  What follows are some of the highlights.

Christo and Jean Claude's "Wrapped Mirror," 1963.

In a folder containing Christo’s documents, I came across a clipping from Time Magazine, dated February 7, 1969.  Reading through, I encountered this little zinger: “Christo – he never uses his surname – knows how to muffle a rampant motorcycle so that it acquires the petrified dynamism of a stuffed buffalo or a blind-folded rhinoceros. He can embalm a slender sapling so that it lies with the mute pathos of Pearl White bound and gagged on the railroad track.”

In case you’re as out of loop as I was, Pearl White was a star of silent movies, known for her sassy stunt work.  Included alongside this article was a mailing from an art dealer advertising the sale of a piece entitled “wrapped mirror.”  In a humorous twist, the shift of scale from architectural to domestic renders Christo and Jean-Claude’s work almost ordinary, the mirror looking as if it were ready to be loaded onto the U-haul, driven across town, and unwrapped.

Elin O'Hara Slavick. (1998). Post colonial girl: paper doll. Glen Mills, PA: Paper Crane Press. pp. 2-3

UNC’s studio art faculty have some of the more complete files, and it was exciting for me to learn new things about their work.  The artists’ book Post Colonial Girl Paper Doll, in elin o’Hara slavick’s file, features a host of colonial outfits that might be “appropriate” for “Priscilla” to wear to some of the darkest events in the history of advanced capitalism.  The effect is powerful, poignant, and eerie.  Slavick’s file also includes some wonderful volumes of writing and art produced in association with the University Program in Cultural Studies.

Wenzhi Zhang, Life Sea (No. 1 & No. 2). 1998

Other North Carolina gems include catalogs from various museums and galleries in the state.  “Affinity with Water and Fire: ceramics by Wenzhi Zhang and Wenying Xiong,” is a catalog from an exhibition hosted by St. John’s Museum of Art in Wilmington, in 2001.  With text in Chinese and English, it not only includes beautiful color reproductions of Wenzhi Zhang’s work, but photographs of her working alongside students and mentors in the studio.

Whether you’re in the mood to browse, or are on the hunt for something quite specific, consider checking out the artists’ file.  You might just find what you’re looking for – or something else entirely!

– Madeline Veitch

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Filed under Artists' files, Special collections in the Art Library

by | October 24, 2011

Curl up with a good (artist’s) book: Clifton Meador’s The Nameless Dead

This is the first in a series of posts about artists’ books in our collection. Since most of our artists’ books are kept behind the desk, we hope that these posts will help you to begin your own exploration of the collection.

The Nameless Dead, by Clifton Meador (PABA Publishing, 2004)

If you’re familiar with artists’ books as handmade examples of bookbinding craft or innovative, unusual structures, you may look at The Nameless Dead and wonder “Why on earth is this an artist’s book?” It looks like any hardcover you would pick up at your local bookstore. Open it up and start to read, though, and it quickly becomes obvious that this is no ordinary book.

The book-within-a-book featured in The Nameless Dead.

Some artists’ books are like lyric poems, others are more like one-liners. Clifton Meador‘s book is a novel, packed with detail, plot, and multiple levels of narrative. A conventional novel would do those things solely with text, but Meador uses all of the tools of the page to tell the story. Text shares space with photographs, diagrams, even an entire book-within-the-book that Meador inserted to add an extra layer to the fiction.

Through his arrangement of all the elements on the page, he guides you through the story’s multiple levels and controls the pace of your reading. The first pages of the book are a good example:

The opening pages of The Nameless Dead.

The first spread has no text at all — just a photo of a roadside scene. The empty white space of the sky gives the impression of expansive desert. The blurriness of the photo gives the impression of speed.

The book’s first words appear on the next spread of pages:

The second spread of pages.

Above a similar roadside landscape are the words “Let’s say you just woke up in a car, a car going too fast on a narrow winding road.” The shortness of the text and its placement on the righthand side of the page help to continue the feeling of speed.

The subtle touch, though, is the way he splits that first sentence into two lines and italicizes the second line. There’s no textual or grammatical reason to do it, but there is an artistic one. It prepares the reader to expect two voices. That becomes very important as the book goes on and the layers of the story multiply.

On the surface the story is about traveling to a ruined city in the desert, but it becomes obvious that all is not as it seems. Midway through the book, while exploring this ruined city the narrator asks, “Am I dead?” Suddenly we must re-think the whole story up to that point.

Things get a little weird later in The Nameless Dead.

Part travel narrative, part meditation on the afterlife, part postmodern novel — and we haven’t even begun to look at the visuals or the exquisite offset printing! I can’t adequately describe The Nameless Dead in this small space. You’ll just have to come curl up with it and read for yourself.

– Josh Hockensmith

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Filed under Artists' books, Special collections in the Art Library

by | October 11, 2011

From the Studio to the Stacks: a Conversation with Travis Donovan

This post is the second in a series focused on MFA students and their research.

Travis Donovan (MFA 2011) makes sculpture that is powerfully infused with cross-disciplinary research.  Recently, I was able to sit down with him to learn a bit about how he integrates a wide variety of sources into his working process.

"Molt", by Travis Donovan. 2011 (Materials: Down Feathers, Mattress, Mechanical Components. Dimensions: Variable.)

Donovan’s interest is in creating “poetic image[s] through the exploration of materials and processes.” In his current work he is dissecting feathers from a multitude of angles, examining “comfort, sensual qualities, but at the same time this history of loss.” His creative process involves gathering a wide variety of information, then “letting that come together in an image – a new experience but referencing back to its echoes in history.”

Although his undergraduate work focused on ceramics, Donovan’s research process has become increasingly cross-disciplinary during his time at UNC.  In his first year in the Master’s program he began to explore materials and processes more broadly. His research has taken him all over the UNC library system, including to the Kenan Science Library and the former Brauer Math/Physics library. Delving into scholarship ranging from philosophy to fluid dynamics, he’s interested “not just in the scientific and mathematical properties of material, but also the symbolic, poetic, and literary connections they might carry.”

Current reads? “Fragments of a Poetics of Fire” by Gaston Bachelard, and various works by preeminent phenomenologist  Henri Bergson. He has also been researching whiskey distillation and the thermal properties of certain minerals in North Carolina clays used for brick-making.

"Illuminationem", 2010. (Materials: Monofilament, Light, Motors, Wood. Dimensions: 20’ x 16’ x 17’.)

Of the resources that have proved especially useful, UNC Master’s theses and dissertations from various disciplines rank high on his list. “They present such a specific, condensed form of research – and local as well.”  While Donovan’s research draws on materials from across campus, Sloane Art Library is his home base:  “This library is my hub – where I start research, but also the place to get stuff and bring it back…it’s allowed me to feel comfortable checking out strange, odd books I wouldn’t otherwise access because I don’t know where they’re at.”

"Prometheus", 2009. (Materials: Fire, Acetone, Steel, Glass. Dimensions: 6’x 8’x14’.)

What would he check out if the library’s collection expanded beyond the usual media? “There are certain tools like microscopes that I wish were available – everything from electron microscopes to vibration sensors, things that allow for the dissection of a phenomenon.  It’s hard to get access to tools like that if you’re not in that field of study.  In an ideal world, there would be some access to those types of tools – with training, of course.”

– Madeline Veitch

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by | October 5, 2011

Faculty Interview: Paroma Chatterjee on using manuscript facsimiles

You look at books, right?

Dr. Chatterjee sharing an illuminated manuscript facsimile with one of her classes.

That is to say, whatever form they take, you probably think of books as something you take in almost wholly through the sense of sight.  In a world of “disembodied” books on Kindles, Nooks, Crannies (which do not exist just yet), and other e-readers, it is easy to get used to the idea of a book as a visual phenomenon divorced from a physical, touchable, smell-able shape.  In my work with manuscript facsimiles, however, I’ve had the opportunity to speak with some of our patrons about how they use our facsimile collection.  As it turns out, some of them have very different ideas about how best to experience a book.

Professor Paroma Chatterjee has been teaching medieval and Byzantine art here at UNC for the last three years.  Her particular interests are in “textual and pictorial narrative, concealment and revelation, the creation (and sometimes destruction) of cult images, the delights and discontents of illusionism, and silent cinema.”  When we met, she explained the benefits of bringing her classes to the library to use our manuscript facsimile collection — which she does at least once each term.

“For them to actually see the stuff and to touch it, and to use it, to see how even the shape and the weight of the folio is different from a regular book, that is what I’ve tried to do.”

The unique physical experience of these facsimiles is not limited to books, either.  For example, there is also the Codex Vaticanus Palatinus Graecus 431 — better known as the Joshua Roll. The Joshua Roll is a large scroll facsimile which Professor Chatterjee enjoys showing the students because it exposes them to an alternative form of the book.

The Joshua Roll in action.

“A lot of the students are very unsure of how to use this object; and then there’s the whole box in which it’s kept, so you open the box, and it has those rollers… but then you begin to play with it and they get more comfortable,” she said, describing the experience.

The “experience” seemed to be the most important part of our facsimile collection for Dr. Chatterjee, and the ways in which that experience differs from more typical means of viewing manuscripts.

“You realize how much your body is implicated in that (handling a manuscript).  I’ve had to lift some of these facsimiles to show, and I can tell you it really was a workout.  And then there are these tiny ones, which also require your body, because you literally have to peer (at it); there’s so much detail and you feel clumsy compared to it, your size is so out of proportion to these beautiful little things. That is what I want the students to get a sense of, there’s NO way a slide lecture does that.  There’s no way a museum does that either, because you can’t actually touch it.  That’s the fun thing about the library, that’s what I try to make them see: look, you can touch it, you could tear it if you wanted!”

“Which we won’t!” she hastily added.

Feeling the love.

Apparently her approach works, too.  Professor Chatterjee described situations in which students simply could not stop handling the facsimiles, staying even after class had ended.  I’ve attended a few of these sessions myself and their excitement is palpable.

If you’re interested in learning more, Professor Chatterjee will be presenting some of our illuminated manuscripts at the Art Library on the evening of October 11 at 6 p.m. I’ll also be continuing to explore our facsimile collection in a series of similar interviews here on the blog. Stay tuned for more discoveries and insights!

– Eva Sclippa

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Filed under Events, Illuminated manuscripts, Manuscript facsimiles, Patron interviews

by | September 23, 2011

The Pretzels and the Fishes: Marginalia in Our Manuscript Facsimile Collection

Beneath the Lamentation of Christ, a stocky peasant man has pulled down his trousers and is mooning the audience.

A man in the margins of the illuminated manuscript The Hours of Simon de Varie.

He offers no explanation for his presence. Neither does the man standing—or rather, blossoming from a flower—to the right of the dead Christ.  His silence may be explained by the fact that he has both hands in his mouth, pulling it open to stick out his tongue in a gesture recognizable across the ages.

Another man and his gesture, from the margins of The Hours of Simon de Varie.

These characters are just two of the many striking grotesques parading through the margins of The Hours of Simon de Varie, an illuminated book of hours from 15th century France.  Here at the Art Library, we have a facsimile of it in our illuminated manuscript facsimile collection.

Perhaps as interesting as the images themselves is the fact that, at some point in the manuscript’s history, one of its owners evidently disapproved of the mooning man.  It is the only image in the text that seems to have been intentionally marred, his twin cheeks barely visible beneath the streaks of paint.  The outrageous cheekiness of this image make it an obvious target for elimination. Remarkably, though, most of the other grotesques remain untouched.  A tour through some of our facsimiles of books of hours shows a similarly bold presence of secular, bizarre, and even crass imagery in the pages of holy texts.

A book of hours is a book created for personal worship.  It was typically used as a kind of plug-and-pray prayer reference book, filling needs such as “to pray for the dead or dying,” “to ask for forgiveness from sins,” “to ask for the intercession of saints,” and many other categories of devotions.

As with most other illuminated manuscripts, books of hours were luxury items possessed only by the richest members of society.  A book that is both a practical prayer manual and a status symbol seems like an unlikely place to find the whimsical creations of an illuminator, but some carried a subtler, more pointed message than those in The Hours of Simon de Varie.

In The Hours of Catherine of Cleves, a life-like rosary frames the page.

Unlike the “mooner and friend”, most of the strange creatures and objects in The Hours of Catherine of Cleves appear in frames encircling pages in the second half of the manuscript.  These are usually executed in a trompe l’oeil style, so that the items that make up the frames appear as if they are lying on top of the page rather than painted on it.  On one page, a rosary lies around the text as if just dropped by the reader.

Some of the items in these frames have more distinct, symbolic meanings. A scene of St. Sebastian’s martyrdom by a firing squad of bowmen is surrounded by a frame made up of bows and arrows. Another saint is surrounded by a chain of fish eating each other.

Mmmmmmm, fish.

A cannibalistic fish fest may not seem very holy, but the image of a larger fish eating a smaller one was a common metaphor during the medieval period for the rich “consuming” the poor.

Hang on to that pretzel.

Other items seem to have been included purely on a whim.  For example: pretzels, which appear in this image along with communion wafers.  Although you might not think that delicious salty snacks would have hidden theological significance, pretzels were evidently a symbol of the arms of the Father.  Mysterious objects that appear on other pages include mussels filled with gold, and crabs.

It seems like an unfair tease to tell you now that “there are many more of these creatures, and you should come see them for yourself,” but a full listing of every unique grotesque in every book of hours we have would tax even the greatest attention span.  There are too many boars playing harps and ghostly faces emerging from cadelles in The Hours of Mary of Burgundy, for one, and too many men wearing ox yokes and beasts in bishop’s miters in The Hours of Jeanne d’Evreux to discuss in one blog post.  So take a look at what we have here, and come in prepared to squint.

– Eva Sclippa

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Filed under Illuminated manuscripts, Manuscript facsimiles, Special collections in the Art Library

by | September 13, 2011

From the Studio to the Stacks (and Beyond!)

Talking about research with MFA student Neill Prewitt

If there’s one thing I’ve learned from talking with UNC graduate students in studio art, it’s that their research process knows no bounds.  From colleagues to community members to obscure volumes in far corners of the UNC Chapel Hill library system, these students take an ambitious and tentacular approach to source gathering.

Working at Sloane, I’ve been lucky enough to witness small moments in this unfolding narrative. Curious about the bigger picture, I will be writing a series of blog posts about MFA students and their research – both in the library and beyond.

Dream Acts (installation view) at the former Chapel Hill Museum

Neill Prewitt, a second year MFA student, recently co-organized the exhibition “Dream Acts.” “Dream Acts” was a project featuring art made by and with residents of the Abbey Court apartment complex in Carrboro. The show was held at the former Chapel Hill Museum in June and July, and featured a wide variety of media.  Walls were covered with portraits of Abbey Court residents posing in front of fantastical backdrops. Fully furnished living rooms evoked a sense of home, while video footage made in collaboration with children from Abbey Court danced over walls and floors.  On the night of the opening, the space was filled with the sounds of celebration and sharing – communities meeting in a liminal, creative space.

I asked Prewitt how he prepared for the project: “There was a lot of primary research, visiting Abbey Court two or three times a week for a while before we started,” he explained.  He and collaborators Eleanor Blake and Lincoln Hancock also worked with UNC professors from a variety of disciplines.  Judith Blau, a professor of sociology at UNC who also serves as director of the Chapel Hill and Carrboro Human Rights Center, was a particularly important resource. The Center, which is located right at Abbey Court, has collaborated with residents on projects such as festival-planning, computer literacy programs, and fair housing advocacy.  Prewitt feels strongly about learning through interaction and dialogue: “So much comes out of it – it’s a living relationship that just grows and grows.”

Yuxtapongo Translucence, The Block Gallery, 2009

When Prewitt heads to the library for resources, he casts a wide net. “It’s hard to know what’s going to be useful…  I’m a big fan of checking out like 12 items and then maybe one of them might work out.” Though he reads a wide variety of literature (at the time of our conversation he was looking at two Bertolt Brecht plays and “The Shadow Factory” by James Bamford), there are particular sections of the Art Library that he frequents for both targeted and serendipitous finds.  “It’s important for information to be online but there’s no substitute for being in an environment like this [where you can] stumble across something on your way to getting what you were looking for.”

Hot tub for checkout.* (*Not yet available at time of publication...)

In an ideal world, what else would he like to check out from the library? “I would love a tool-sharing library along the lines of the tech shop in Durham – though that would require instruction.”  On a more serious note:  “I want to check out a hot tub for the weekend.”

-Madeline Veitch

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by | September 9, 2011

Coming up on Tuesday, Sept. 13th: Hanes Visiting Artist lecture by Thomas Nozkowski

Thomas Nozkowski, Untitled (8-135), 2010, oil on linen on panel, 22 x 28 inches (55.9 x 71.1 cm), copyright Thomas Nozkowski, courtesy The Pace Gallery, Photo by: G.R. Christmas, courtesy The Pace Gallery

Event details:
Thomas Nozkowski
Tuesday, September 13th
Hanes Auditorium, Hanes Art Center
6:00 pm

Although he started out working in sculpture, Thomas Nozkowski has built his career around small-scale abstract paintings. His compact pictures are filled with lively organic and geometric forms. His works reward close looking — trying to understand their inventive and whimsical compositions can feel a bit like peering through a microscope or a kaleidoscope.

The brightly colored canvases seem strangely familiar, perhaps because Nozkowski finds inspiration in the real world. He is always on the lookout for a truly bizarre subject, though, from a state of mind to a road map. For example, in An Autobiography — included in the artist’s vertical file at the Sloane Art Library — works by Nozkowski on the right-hand side of the page respond to map fragments and photographs of New York on the left. In Flare, Nozkowski collaborated with poet Cole Swensen to develop prints that responded to the written word.

Unlike many abstract painters, Nozkowski chooses to work on a small scale. Many of his paintings are 16 by 20 inches, allowing him to experiment with forms in a single session. In an interview with BOMB magazine, Nozkowski described his process:

“Every time I work on a painting, I’ll make sure the entire surface is opened up with a wash of pigment or has been rubbed down so that everything is put back in question. If you see a painting that I worked on for fifteen years, what you’re actually seeing is the final day’s work. The entire surface of the painting has been worked on in that last session.”

To Nozkowski, painting is a process of discovery, of finding forms and relations that you never could have predicted at the start. His goal is to create a truly energized space, something interesting and beautiful — though you may not be able to explain why it’s beautiful.

Nozkowski will give a 30 minute introduction to his work, which will be followed by a conversation with Cary Levine, Assistant Professor of Contemporary Art, and a Q&A with the audience. Reception to follow.

For more detail, see the Art Department’s announcement.

– Laura Fravel

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by | August 29, 2011

When the book is art

"Memory Loss," by Scott McCarney, is one of more than 600 artists' books in the Sloane Art Library collection.

Every day we read new articles about the death of the book, the decline of print culture, the inevitable e-mergence of e-verything digital. At the same time we see frequent revelations of artists doing amazing new things with the book form. While the traditional book may be on the decline as the main vehicle for our information, more people than ever feel a special appreciation for what books can do.

That means that it’s a great time to be an artist’s book.

"Words of Chan K'in: Lacandon Jungle" is an artist's book produced by Taller Leñateros, a collective of Mayan women in Chiapas, Mexico.

At the Sloane Art Library we have over 600 artists’ books. They range from the early photographic bookworks of Ed Ruscha to the contemporary, almost architectural marvels of Julie Chen. We’re also lucky to receive many Latin American artists’ books through discoveries made by Teresa Chapa – UNC’s Librarian for Latin America, Iberia, Latina/o Studies.

A wide variety of patrons make use of our artists’ books. Studio art faculty use them to teach their students about working in the book form. Art history students use them for research. Local and visiting artists consult them for inspiration and instruction. Most of our artists’ books are kept in a cabinet behind the desk, but they are available to the public upon request and we’re always delighted to share them.

So what exactly IS an artist’s book?

It’s not the same as a deluxe edition showing an artist’s work – those are usually referred to as livres d’artistes. It’s not even necessarily an example of fine bookbinding or printing. Instead, an artist’s book is a work of art that makes use of the characteristics of a book, and can only exist as a book. As Dick Higgins says in his introduction to Artists’ books: A critical anthology and sourcebook:

Heather Weston's books do an excellent job of marrying form and content, as in "Binding Analysis: Double Bind".

“[An artist's book is] a book done for its own sake and not for the information it contains… It doesn’t contain a lot of works, like a book of poems. It is a work. Its design and format reflect its content—they intermerge, interpenetrate.”

Although their roots certainly reach back through the millenia, artists’ books have been a distinct medium since the mid-twentieth-century. For detailed histories, see Johanna Drucker’s The Century of Artists’ Books and Betty Bright’s No Longer Innocent: Book art in America, 1960-1980.

As a regular feature on our blog, I’ll be writing about artists’ books from our collection. I’ll discuss how they work and where they fit in our collection and the field of artists’ books in general.

So please stay tuned! In the meantime, you can check out our research guide on artists’ books. You can also see a full listing of the titles in our collection. If you’re interested in learning more about a specific book, please email me at hockensm@email.unc.edu. I’d be happy to send you more information or write a future entry about it!

– Josh Hockensmith

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by | July 25, 2011

Welcome!

Welcome to the 2011-2012 UNC-Chapel Hill school year and to the Sloane Art Library’s new blog.

The beginning of the school year is always an exciting time around here, so we thought it would be the ideal time to launch our blog. We’ll be using it to keep you posted about Library and Art Department events, to show you some of our hidden treasures, and to share the thoughts and experiences of our patrons.

Here are some things you can look forward to appearing here:

One of our most popular artists' books: Panorama, by Julie Chen.

  • A series of posts about artists’ books from our collection;
  • Interviews with studio art MFA students about how they use the library;
  • Posts about scholars and artists who will be visiting UNC as part of the Hanes Visiting Artist lecture series;
  • Interviews with art historians about several of the stunning facsimiles of medieval manuscripts we have in the collection.

And that’s just what we have planned so far.

Whether you’re just discovering the Art Library or you already agree that there’s no place like Sloane, we hope you’ll find something here to enjoy.

Cheers!

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