IDAHO CELEBRATES BOOKWORKS: I eagerly await the Idaho Center for the Book newsletter that celebrates the biennial “Booker’s Dozen” exhibition. It’s supervised by ICFB head honcho Tom Trusky. As always, he throws readers a little gift (or maybe a challenge) in the way the newsletter is constructed. In the April issue, readers are asked to assemble a Booker’s Dozen catalog from the newsletter. Since this involves cutting with sharp scissors and stapling, I will have to be supervised. The Booker’s Dozen this year features some wonderful bookwork creations by Idahoans. Amy Nack’s Book takes the form of “a small scroll rapped around a wooden dowel and placed inside the operating mechanism of a silver lipstick tube to resemble the 55-gallon drums that contained the [Agent Orange] chemical.” The title of the piece is “Agent Orange: The Lingering Kiss.” Scott Samuelson “commemorates my father’s war” with color illustrations of his father’s World War II bomber flights over monuments such as Stonehenge and medieval French cathedrals. The handsewn book has a military blue kangaroo leather cover embossed with an image of Stonehenge. Vanessa Franklin made "a guidebook for personal rites of passage" with "Greater Vedauvoo," a title that celebrates the rock formations in the Laramie Range near Cheyenne. Says Franklin: "The endless accordion shape reflects the cyclic journey detailed in the essay." Carrie Applegate’s “The Altered States” celebrates “big letter” souvenir postcards of the 1930s. Wyomingites might want to catch the exhibit when it steers close to our borders in Pocatello (September and October), Idaho Falls (November) and Rexburg (December).
- posted by Michael Shay @ 8:26 AM