A successful departure for the Press using the new technology

(Whittington Press) Portmeirion. Images by Leslie Gerry. Text by Robin Llywelyn. (Risbury, Herefordshire.) 2008. Accordion fold. 11.5” x 8”. Printed at Whittington & Dowdeswell on Somerset and Zerkall geglättet mouldmade papers. The type is 24 point Stephenson Blake Caslon and the seven original prints are drawn on a tablet and digitally printed by the artist. In a decorated slipcase. One in an edition of 350 copies thus, signed by Leslie Gerry and Robin Llywelyn. Fine.

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An artist offspring of the Washington power-scene returns with her camera to record her impressions of the current environment

Raised by men in suits, (father, uncle, step father, grandfather) through her childhood in Washington DC, the artist returns home decades later to see what’s going on. What are they doing up there? Not doing? Undoing?

Carrying a point-and-shoot in her pocket, Rosamond Casey wanders all over Capitol Hill, following them everywhere they walk, through the streets, in and out of restaurants, hotel lobbies, the senate buildings, poking into offices and chambers in order to capture them as they move about. The book contains hand-pulled photo reproductions of ten mixed media photo/ paintings averaging 48” x 36” in size which the artist made from the snapshots taken on the Hill that day.

We begin the visual query with a piece called “Initiation”, moving on to “Chinese Whispers”, “House of Deliberation”, “Powerstroke: Act one”, “After Thought”, “The Double Tree Hotel Massacre”, “the Passion”, “What Lurked Beneath the Thing he Would Have Said”, “The Flagellation”; and finally in a sort of prayer for redemption, “Enter the Blue Dawn”. The ten images allude indirectly to a Stations of the Cross journey as the artist attempts to piece together an answer to the question, “What happens to these men in suits during this passage through the rock-hard halls of power?”

The clamshell box that holds the book is bound in Versace pinstripe wool with solid brass spine engraved with the title of the work.The interior lining is a fleshy pink silk on the verso and scarlet red on the verso tray. The book is bound in brass channel, the samematerial used to frame the photo/paintings depicted in the book. The box measures 19” x 14”. One of 25 copies.

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1. Campbell, Ken — Father’s Hook
2. Pinned Down, from artist Kerry McAleer-Keeler
3. The Press at Colorado College — The Cycle of the Day: A Book of Hours

(Karen Bleitz) The Mechanical Word (Vol. 1 – 5). Designed and produced by Karen Bleitz with texts by Richard Price. Engineered by Sean Matthews & Andy Armstrong at Redline CNC. Printed at Pikan File Systems. Circle Press. London. U.K. 2005. 4p. each volume. 9.5” x 9.5” x 1.5”. Aluminium and silkscreened polypropylene with silkscreened polypropylene slipcase. Painted metal covers with central panel with moveable parts. Each volume encased in firm semi-transparent plastic with a velcro closure. An edition of 15 signed sets. Fine.

Vol. 1: I AGAINST I (subject)	Vol. 4: HOLD UP (to have)
Vol. 2: WRECKING BALL (to be)	Vol. 5: LONG GONE (to go)
Vol. 3: HARD DONE FROM (to do)

“Aluminium means that the body of the book and the machine parts are made from extruded aluminum. I gave plan drawings of all the parts to an engineering firm who produced them using CNC machinery (like a magic manufacturing box that popped out perfectly turned pieces of metal). The aluminium has been sprayed (painted).
“Silkscreened polypropylene refers to the pages themselves. The pages actually form the binding as they are scored and creased to create built-in hinges to hold the metal covers and metal page hidden in the middle together.” – Bleitz.

For the past ten years Karen Bleitz has been creating interactive book works that explore the changing nature of language and communication. In her latest project, The Mechanical Word, she has collaborated with poet Richard Price (whose book, Lucky Day, was short listed for the 2005 Whitbread Poetry Award) to produce a five volume series of mechanical poetry books. The idea of constructing a form of ‘mechanical’ language began as an exploration of the idea that “language pervades thought – with different languages causing their speakers to construe reality in different ways.” (Stephen Pinker, The Language Instinct, 1994)

Discs, drivers, levers and gears are used in the books to create mechanical metaphors and to give readers a new, physical tool with which to break down and examine the underlying meaning of words. The first half of each volume contains a poem illustrating how the machine acts as a part of speech. In the second half, the ‘machine’ is put to use in the context of a more complex ‘mechanical sentence’. By turning the crank, the reader activates the second poem by Richard Price and is forced to address the changes created on the page.

“I wanted to use machines to look at the dynamic relationships – people and power relationships – that grammatical rules quietly and sometimes noisily suggest.” – Bleitz.

Richard Price was born in 1966 and grew up in Scotland. He trained as a journalist at Napier College, Edinburgh, before studying English at the University of Strathclyde, Glasgow. The youngest of the Informationist group of poets, he was a founder of the magazines associated with them, Gairfish and Southfields. He also co-founded Vennel Press, the imprint which brought many of the earlier Informationist collections to a wider audience. Richard Price is currently Head of Modern British Collections at the British Library, London.

Related posts:

1. Shirley Sharoff — La Marelle à Trois Temps (Hopscotch in three tempos)
2. Sandra Jackman — Tic Toc for the Time Being
3. Fourteen Stations of the Cross, a 3-volume artist’s book by Keith Dietrich