Artists’ Books and Rare Books for Sale » Blog Archive » 14 Stations

14 Stations – Jeff Morin’s sailorBOYpress

$1,500.00

(sailorBOYpress) 14 Stations. Artist’s book by Jeffrey Morin. Stevens Point, Wisconsin. WI. 2008. 62p. Book – 9.5″ x 9″. Box – 12.5″ x 10″ x 3.5″. Printed in Gill Sans on Indian Village paper. The 14 double-page color illustrations are from reduction linoleum blocks that are printed with a heavy hand to produce a more painterly image. Made by Brian Borchardt, the spike-like shapes in the brown cover stock emulate the crown of thorns. The book is encased in a black leather box, lined with black cloth with a matching separate lid. Laid in the bottom of the box is a metal crown of thorns which is painted red/brown in parts, with a Rosary wound round it. An edition of 45 copies. Fine.

Morin writes: “Why this book and why in this incarnation? My work will on occasion remain about the AIDS pandemic because I believe that it is a dangerously robust force that is consuming parts of our population here and abroad. Some worry that there is activist fatigue so less attention is being focused on this subject. I also believe that artists have a dialogue with the past and must bring something new to the conversation. The 14 Stations of the Cross are among my earliest memories of going to church because they were set at the outer aisles and my family always sat in the same outer pew across from a station and across from a particular stained glass window. The 14 stations are so well known so the question becomes: What can one bring to the historic dialogue that has not been presented or said before? This is my attempt to add to the conversation and make the historic relevant.

“Whenever I can, I draw from the figure and have done so for the past 30 years. It has been a constant as I work through several media: design, paint, print, paper etc… It is also a way to problem-solve in a quick way. I engaged two models to work through this project and had them pose together with simple instruction about the particular station that I was working on. Because this is a story about a contemporary couple, they would be the constant characters throughout the story regardless of the original reference. I would give the biblical reference to the models and then my take on the referene as regards the ‘new’ story. When models have not been comfortable posing together, I have had to create the interaction so it was a great opportunity to find two models that were friends and comfortable working through this content. I transferred the reference material (some photo, some drawn) to linoleum blocks, did the reduction cuts and edition-printed the color. Reduction printing is interesting/challenging because the final result is not known until the last color is printed. And at that point, the linoleum block has been completely destroyed. This final book is actually the second version. In the first, I transferred the text to the blocks as well with the intention of hand-cutting the typography. The limitation with this idea was that the text was to emulate block books which predated letterpress work in Europe.

“I wanted to create a story that was both new and familiar so took some references directly from the New Testament and then began to deconstruct the story – looking for a way to deal with confession, accusation, and reconciliation. These are fairly basic interactions that most people can relate to. I was also intrigued by the changing nature of the name, Jesus. In the Latino culture it is common today. In the non-Latino community it seems to be a sacrilege to name someone after Christ. The relationship between the sacred and profane has always been compelling to me.”