An artists book in the guise of a scientifically accurate field guide (or maybe vice versa), Clouds is based on the International Cloud Atlas. The artist, Ben Young, made a sculptural representation of every cloud type. Each sculpture was photographed and then destroyed.
Summer Sigs is a publication format and distribution method initiated to address a seasonal lull in activity at our press. Starting in early June of 2012, we offered artists a container with a modest form—16 pages, 8.5 by 5.5 inches, saddle stitched, black plus a spot ink of choice—to be filled as they saw fit. We encouraged projects that embraced and took advantage of these limitations.
The series consists of 17 booklets published in an edition of 300. One third of the edition was distributed for free at a series of public releases. A second third was given to the artist to distribute as they see fit. The final third of the edition was saved until the entire series was complete, at which point each booklet became a single signature in this bound anthology.
Recordings is a series of books that are the result of a physical interaction between the printer and the offset press. Colors are added to the press during printing following a predetermined “score.” The act of printing becomes an act of performance, and the book is the evidence of its occurrence. Recordings conflate books and sculpture. They use the machinery of mechanical reproduction to create visual records of specific, unrepeatable conditions of color and change.
A multinational software corporation sends a car with a camera mounted on the roof down a one-lane unpaved forest road deep in the Salmon-Huckleberry Wilderness beneath Mount Hood. The camera snaps a 360º view of the wilderness every 50 feet. It captures the forest at dusk, or maybe dawn. Dark firs and aspen blur past and a log-strewn river throws froth. The photographs cannot be said to aid navigation of the forest road. What, then, is the purpose?
