Thursday 25 January 2007

An Artist's Book

You are about to go on a Winter Journey.

Winterreise was a book I finished creating in 2005 but am still printing - just doing a couple of new copies for the Art on Paper show next week ( see below ). It is my dialogue with Schubert, based on his song cycle, a parallel text.
My words are hand written on transparent Japanese paper over fragments of Wilhelm Mueller's poems, hand -cut from card as a collagraph; these poems Schubert himself called 'songs to make your hair stand on end' - they are printed first in German and then in the translation by William Mann.
Peel back the layers and you reach the images, the colours of which have a hallucinatory glare. I wanted a combination of beauty and anguish; a tribute to Schubert's life cut short by a tragically early death.
The covers are made with hand-made card, embossed like an iced cake. The book looks delicate in format but the images inside are strong dark tableaux through the ice.
It's an irregular 12" X 17" in size; there's an exposed spine binding on tapes with decorated stitching.

The images were posted up for me by my dearly beloved and fellow book artist ( see his blog site on http://peterchasseaud.blogspot.com ) ( or indeed both of us together on fellow artist site http://stephanefretz.hautetfort.com/ )
- we are learning as we go!
so to see the images in the correct order scroll now to the bottom of them and work your way back up!!
I'm back to work on new books
more about these later.....

Winterreise artists book






























































































































































































































































Monday 22 January 2007

Carolyn Trant & Parvenu Press

This is the new blogsite for my Artists Books - I am the Press and the Press, c'est moi.
It's a full time job, although I also manage to squeeze in teaching an evening class in printmaking at the Paddock Studios in Lewes and occasional Book Art classes at Brighton Independent Printmaking.

In due course I hope to show here images of books I am working on, past editions and details of those still available. Also details of my one-offs and installations and other artwork.
I work with books as an artist and there are often images from the books available for sale as limited edition prints.

Here are some of the places where I will be exhibiting my work in 2007:

'Covered' at the Works on Paper Fair, Burlington House ( Burlington Gdns entrance)
- part of the Royal Academy, Piccadilly, London 1-4th February

10th International Contemporary Artists Book Fair in the Parkinson Court, Parkinson Building, University of Leeds 9th - 10th March 11a.m. -6 p.m.

1st Bristol Contemporary Artists Book Fair at the Arnolfini - 20th-21st April

The PBFA second June Book Fair ( formerly held at the Commonwealth Institute ) at
Novotel London West, 1 Shortlands, Hammersmith, London
8th June 2pm - 7pm 9th June 10 am. - 4 pm
this coincides with annual Book fair at Olympia

New Installation - The Falcon Bride at the Star Gallery, Lewes, East Sussex
begins 8th September
watch this space for further details

Vis a Vis, Book Fair - Marseilles 13th October

Fine Press Book Association Artists Book Fair at Oxford Brookes University, Oxford
3-4th November

LAB 07 at the ICA November/December; date to be confirmed

I will be giving a talk about my work to the Designer Bookbinders at the very end of the year.

I hope to show my new book done in collaboration with the poet James Simpson, as part of the exhibition - Poets in the Landscape; the Romantic Spirit in British Art at Pallant House, Chichester March 31 - June 10
further details to be confirmed

It's a busy year, so it may take a couple of weeks for me to get the images on this site......
Meanwhile, you can read about my work in Illustration Magazine Spring 2006 issue 7.