Beth Thielen
Beth Thielen’s pop-up books allow for an emotional experience that is powerful, vivid and real. She says “I think of book art as a personal journey, an interior landscape.” In her book, Why the Revolving Door: the Neighborhood, the Prisons, the sculptural pop-ups echo the dark days of the L.A. riots – a cry from the heart. Thielen decided, after some years of grieving, to make available a small edition of a visual diary she created a week after her mother’s death. This, too, is an artist’s outpouring of memories, in this case those of a departed parent – and this work stands as a moving testament to a daughter’s grief.
She has been teaching in the California prison system since 1985. When Thielen first started teaching, it was through the California Arts Council Artist in Residency Grants. Selected by a panel of her peers, she received $1600 per month to provide 20 hours per week of instruction at the participating institution. Many young artists in the state of California started their careers with this program.
That program no longer exists, and the tolerance for this kind of program is increasingly threatened.
Thielen’s unusual books continue to make one stop, think, and admire. Her work is represented in the Paul Getty Museum of Art, the Library of Congress, Houghton Library, Harvard, Yale University, the Spencer Collection at the New York Public Library, as well as other important public and private collections.
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