Susan Allix – Shadowscapes
A book about words evoking evening and night, darkness and light
(Susan Allix) Shadowscapes. Nocturnal extracts from 7 poets: William Shakespeare, William Collins, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Lord Byron, Edward Thomas, William Wordsworth and James Thomson. Artist’s book by Susan Allix. London. 2009. 44p. 9.5” x 7.25”. The etchings are printed from copper mezzotint plates, with line drawing and hand shaken aquatint (using selected different sized resin grains) on zinc plates. They are inked in Heavy French black pigment ground in copperplate oil. The letterpress is 18pt. Bembo Italic on Magnani Book paper. Endpapers are textured white paper of eastern origin airbrushed in cool black. The whole is contained in a grey box set at an angle inside a black cloth box, thus disturbing the expected first view of the book. The edition is of 17 copies, 15 of which have the prints on Richard de Bas hand made paper, and 2 copies with prints on Velin Arches. All signed by Susan Allix. Fine.
Allix writes: “The words from these writers are about evening and night, darkness and light in the landscape, in trees and in skies. By using the most evocative parts of the poetry, the book is tailored to a short intensity of black and white. By basing the etchings on the use of mezzotint which creates one of the deepest and most mysterious of printmaking blacks, the shadows of word and image are brought together.
“ To lift this away from a book of small-black-images-with-poetry, the pages are sometimes folded in upon themselves in geometric shapes, which create their own shadows, and reveal or partly obscure the central page. The exposed lines of pages in the spine of the binding link with the irregular page edges, and the cut out areas on the boards show light and shadowy shapes; on the front board abstractly onlaid, on the book board a slash.”
Related items: Artists' Books, Catalogue 38 Preview - Winter 2009/2010, Susan Allix, William Shakespeare