|
|
Barb Tetenbaum
Prompted by an upcoming exhibition "Four Proposals Toward the Future of Reading" I am creating an artist book documenting the experience of reading Ralph W. Emerson's 1841 essay "Circles". I rewrote this essay using a special pen that leaves a hardened raised mark. I also recorded my reactions to the text and to what that was going on around me in order to illuminate the reader's mind. From the 23 hand-written sheets I am editioning "pressure prints", a technique I discovered in the early 1990’s, that uses the Vandercook press like a rubbing tool.
This project builds on my past work, which serves to illuminate and mirror the experience of the reader. Willa Cather's novel, My Ántonia, has been the subject of four recent book and installation projects. This Emerson project goes further to expose the tangential thoughts and experiences that happen during reading. My long term goals with all these projects is to show the non-static nature of the printed word.
Bio: Barb Tetenbaum is a Professor and Department Head of Book Art at the Oregon College of Art and Craft in Portland, Oregon. She is the proprietor of Triangular Press which she founded in 1979 whilst studying with Walter Hamady at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Career highlights include two years at Twinrocker Handmade Paper as Printer-in-Residence; seven years as the Printer/Curator of the Silver Buckle Press (UW-Madison); two Fulbright awards to teach in Leipzig, Germany and near Prague, CZ; and visiting instructor positions at the Burg Giebichenstein in Halle, Germany and as the Koopman Distinguished Chair at the Hartford Art School in West Hartford, CT.
|
