This is the third part of my love letter series, each letter written to one of the art forms that I work with and adore. For my letters to Photography and Sculpture, check them out on A Nomadic Rose HERE.
Dear Book Art,
We were a perfect match before I knew you existed. From the day I was taught to bind books during my photography undergrad, we were destined to find each other. It took another few years, but I discovered you eventually, and realised then that I had always known you. I had been playing on your fringes since I was a child. Now I had a name for you, and more than that I discovered your history, your theories, your concepts, and most importantly, your community.
You encompass so much of what I love. Photobooks, sculptural books, poetry, typography, design. You do it all. With you, there is room for it all. The flexibility of your borders, that “what is that?” that seems so much a part of you, allows you to become anything and everything. It lets me play and makes me think. You expand my mind and my world. Like a good book you aren’t nearly as small or contained as you seem.
What is a book?
What could be a book?
What could a book be?
Is it bookish?
The questions you asked me seeped into everything else I make, even when I wasn’t aware of it.
Like photography and sculpture, there is such an intimacy in your craft. The relationship between my hands and your pages, your beautiful tools, your colours. I get lost in them, happily, for hours. And like photography and sculpture you are the perfect mixture of new and old, physical making and computer craft. You let me create the balance I need to make art from you, to express myself. With so much on offer, I am free to choose. A freedom that is endlessly freeing.
But you have something no other art form of mine has ever had. You have a community I became a part of. Those wonderful book fairs and familiar faces, the tables of treasures laid out in galleries, in university halls, and under glass ceilings. Conversations had over books. Ideas shared. Skills swapped. You community small, thriving, and utterly welcoming. I have never been one for joining, to shy and scared for being part of a community. But with you it was natural, it was easy. You welcomed it, made space, gave me a chance to forge my own community within you. And I did, for many years I made book art and shared it from tables and stages across the country. You empowered me.
From that community and with that power I took my first professional steps as an artist. I made connections. I sold my work. I got it into collections and libraries, into museums and exhibitions. I ran live nights, curated prizes and exhibitions, planned a symposium and published its talks, I even took over as Creative Director of my most beloved book fair. For a while I couldn’t imagine wanting anything else.
Then something changed, and the power you gifted me gave me the strength to make art of different sorts, art I suddenly found myself needing to make. But don’t worry, you are always there. There in the double spread of a split screen in a piece of video art, there in the proposals I am writing, there in so much of my life. We walk together still, because you truly do it all.
We were always destined, and we will never part. Who knows where that destiny will lead us together.
I love you,
Rosie
For more about my book art, check out the pages on my website…
https://www.rosiesherwood.com/book-art
https://www.rosiesherwood.com/about-asyetuntitled
Want to know more about book art? Full of questions? Leave me a comment below!