An American Tradition Since 1966
The genesis of the American artist’s book occurred when the Los Angeles-based pop artist, Ed Ruscha, published Every Building on the Sunset Strip. An accordion book, using offset lithograph on paper presented in a silver mylar-covered slipcase, it is 7-5/16 inches by almost 27 feet long when opened up. When the reader/viewer positions the book sideways, it replicates Ruscha’s view from the window of his car traversing the Boulevard’s entire length, with the north side running along one border, and the south along the other.

Philip Zimmermann, Long Story Short, 1999

Having said that, a lot of what constitutes today’s artists' books doesn’t resemble Ruscha's work much at all. In fact, artists are very conscious of the materiality of their books, deconstructing the traditional book form, experimenting with a multitude of materials that push the envelope beyond paper, cloth, and board. Virtually nothing is off the table when considering ways to convey a book’s story.

How today’s book artists have learned their craft makes for an interesting sidebar: Bookmaking, or book arts, didn’t enter the college or university fine arts curriculum until well into the 1970s, even the 1980s. As a result, there is no long evolutionary development of teaching; thus, many of the category’s best craft artists – and the teachers themselves – are self-taught.

Books made by Flying Fish press, Siblia Savage photo

Book Artists Worth Reading Up On
For such a relatively young discipline, book arts has a fair share of practitioners who have made their (book)mark.

• Julie Chen writes her own text and creates her own images, and combines them in a form that is highly sculptural and manipulatable. Her books are meant to be handled, and are very much to be “read” like one would a conventional book. Characterized by a lot of “hide and reveal,” they feature wonderful little secrets as you open up much of her work;

• Betsy Davids is a book artist and writer who derives inspiration from her dreams and dream experiences, and has been creating extensive volumes for almost four decades. She says, “on a daily basis, the external world brings me mail; on a nightly basis, an inner world brings me dreams”;

• Claire Van Vliet has been making books, broadsides, pamphlets, and keepsakes longer than anyone in this country, and was the recipient of a MacArthur Foundation “Genius Grant.” She has incorporated numerous illustration processes, plus bindings from traditional codex form, accordion fold/concertinas, medieval longstitch, and various non-adhesive sewn and woven book structures;

• Additional book artists, and resources to see their work and others’ can be found in the web section, The Craft of Book Arts.

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