(Deborah Phillips Chodoff) Move³: A movable Book. Artist’s book by Deborah Phillips Chodoff. [Katonah. NY] 20032007. Three double-page spreads. 10” x 11” x 1”. Materials used are: book board, hand-printed paper (Arches); inkjet prints on Legion Fine Art Paper; found objects; hardware items. Collages on board. By manipulating the movable parts on the cover you can play with the words ‘removable’ and ‘movable’ but not ‘immovable’, which is firmly glued in place. Laid in a black box with casters and a black string that both holds the lid closed and serves as a pull-string. An edition of 3 copies. Signed and dated in pencil on the back cover. Fine.

“The directive, which came by mail one day, to create a “movable book”, intrigued me. In pondering the question, “What exactly is a “movable book”? I found myself at the hardware store buying hinges, clothespins, pulley wheels, magnets, casters, and other accessories of movement rather than studying my how-to pop-up manuals. The word “move” was my starting point; I added new prefixes and settled on “removable” and “immovable” as complementary concepts. “ – Deborah Phillips Chodoff.

“Pages 1-2 (Removable): Photographs document the act of removal and objects likely to be removed; inkjet collages show the tools and substances of removal; parts of the pages are removable, held in place by magnets; hand-printed paper patterns were made by spraying and removing shapes.

“Pages 3-4 (Movable): Inkjet collages show moving parts, including scans of parts moving; part of a page is a removable disk that fits onto a bobbin and spins when a string is pulled, much like a Yo-Yo; hand-printed paper has patterns made by stamping and moving inked objects.

“Pages 5-6 (Immovable?): Aside from the ‘immovable’ bolt used to keep the bobbin in place, what in the universe is truly immovable? A crab fossil and images of stones in water underscore this question of permanence.” – Chodoff.

Related posts:

1. For the Love of All Things Damaged, artist’s book/object from Kerry McAleer-Keeler
2. The Age of Partial Objects, by book artist Dean Dass
3. Key to the Imagination, a book from artist Kerry McAleer-Keeler

(Deborah Phillips Chodoff) Procrastination. Unique Variant No. 4. Artist’s book by Deborah Phillips Chodoff. n.p. 2001. Accordion fold. 3.75″ x 8.5″ x 4.75″. Double-sided book object, each side with the word PROCRASTINATION spelt out on each opening. Pages constructed of bookboard, painted bronze & buffed, with backing painted with black vinyl paint. One side has a letter glued to brown card; the other side with white paper containing a large letter, some text and decoration. A plastic timer filled with white grains holds the openings in place with gold-colored wire filaments. At each end of the book are metal clock pieces with a clock face externally, as well as internally, on the one side where black, white and gold wire emerges from the outer side to finish in various shapes, some on brown card, some without. Three metal cogs on the decorative wired side. All laid in a black painted dropback box with a strip of the various letters comprising the title collaged round the base of the box, as well as on top. Titled, signed and dated on the inner lid, together with a collaged image of a broken clock and timers. A unique signed variant in an edition of approximately 6 copies. Fine.

We waited for the completion of this clever conceptual book for some years! It was a tremendous amount of work to find all the components and construct the ‘book’. However, the wait was well worth it!

Related posts:

1. Unique Artist’s Manuscript Book from Dean Dass — For Girolamo Fracastoro
2. Broaddus, John Eric – Green Cow
3. Broaddus, John Eric – Seasons of the Pine

(Deborah Phillips Chodoff) A Dishwasher is not Magic. Artist’s book by Deborah Phillips Chodoff. [New York.] 1993.6” x 4.675”. Accordion fold book between boards. Cut-outs, collages, pieces of plastic sponge, porcelain, plastic, and color Xerox images of kitchen equipment. Pages joined with pieces of checked dish cloth. Checked cloth covers with title on front board made up of individual stamped letters on glued onto pieces of kitchen sponge; back board with design made of green, red and yellow kitchen sponges. White card box container opening to the front, with image of dishwasher on front; signed and dated. No. V in an edition of 5 signed copies. Fine.

Related posts:

1. Broaddus, John Eric – Seasons of the Pine
2. The Age of Partial Objects, by book artist Dean Dass
3. Broaddus, John Eric – Black Book

All our items from Deborah Phillips Chodoff

The unusual & creative conceptual work of Deborah Phillips Chodoff

We quote from an interview in ‘The Lewisboro Ledger’ by Rose Fisk:

Born in post-war Japan, Deborah Phillips Chodoff finds echoes of Oriental art in her work, … Construction in the bookform is the center of her expression. …  “Construction is what I love to do best as an artist.,” she said. …

Chodoff spent her early years in Tokyo surrounded by Japanese art. “I think a lot of it sank in. My work is very much influenced by Japanese art.” After living in Japan, where her father worked as an economist rebuilding the country after World War II, the family moved to Washington D.C., [where] her mother became [a] curator [at] the Corcoran Gallery of Art.

“I could take classes for free at the Corcoran,” she said. “I had a lot of art training before college.” … Afterwards she went to Paris to study printmaking at Atelier 17, the same studio that trained Picasso and Dali in the skill. … upon returning to New York in the early ‘70s she worked at The Printmaking Workshop. … She began to paint. During her painting heyday she lived near the north coast of Peru while her husband did graduate work in archaeology. …

“The landscape was extraordinary,” Chodoff said. “It  really affected me, … it was a lonely and stimulating experience.” The desert she found was completely barren – it is one of the driest in the world. “It became a metaphor for that isolation you feel as an artist.” …

“It was a big adjustment to come back to the city,” Chodoff said. She found the city to be very complex. … She did a series of collages which she wanted to bring together as a unit. So she made a book.

“Only after I made my first one, I learned there was a community of artists who made books. I do it steadily now asmy major medium.”

Her works contain social commentary. …”What I’m doing is a reaction to the conditions of the times.” Her work is political to the extent that society affects her, she says. When something touches her deeply, like the war, it is only natural for her to expressit in art.

Other works look at her experiences as a working mother “not just a personal frustration but a societal frustration withthe role of women. … She finds she enjoys teaching children and providing them with an opportunity to express themselves. “They come up with extraordinary things. It gives me a lot of energy.”

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