Don’t miss the extraordinary exhibition “Power of the Presses” at Bainbridge Island Museum of Art until June 8. A selection from the Cynthia Sears collection of 3,500 artists’ books (one of the largest in the country) curated by Catherine Alice Michaelis, it features 33 printmaking methods. But it also emphasizes a wide range of content from environmental to political. The role of the press in building community is the main theme. As the curator explained, she chose works that “shared a voice of community or personal, intimate expression — in a way that gathers community. The press as a tool for sharing voice. Pieces had to be personal in some way. I also looked for an example of every printmaking method that was in the glossary.”
Surprisingly, in the center of the gallery, we see an offset printing press. Amos Paul Kennedy, Jr. was there the day I went, printing posters for anyone that stopped by. Behind him a wall of broadsides by a range of artists featured such direct statements as “Stop Voter Suppression,” “Peace,” “Breathe,” “I ain’t afraid to live in a world of trans people I am afraid to live in a world without them,” and “Without Song Each Day Would Be A Century.”
Mare Blocker, a pioneering role model for the artists’ books community, created an “altar/throne” made of books. When I was there she sat in that throne reading excerpts from her stories and from “My Beloved Community Dictionary.” Her focus, as described by the curator, is “how creativity can lead to self-discovery and the healing power that printing offers.”
The multiple prints on one wall engage community through Partners in Print. Collectively called “Words of Courage,” some of these were selected from poems written at Seattle Children’s Hospital through the Seattle Children’s Poet in Residence program. For example, an eleven-year-old patient titled her poem “Cured.” In the last verse she says, “I hope to close the door on being bald and self-conscious. I hope to open the door to having soft hazel curls hiding my ears and neck.”
The pages in Amos Paul Kennedy, Jr.’s poem book “Riddle ma riddle as I suppose: riddles from the Sea Islands of South Carolina” unfold one by one in different directions, ultimately forming large squares. The artist told me the riddles are based on local secrets and lore so we can’t answer them.
Shana Agid’s letterpress print book features text pointing at various places in Manhattan with the provocative title “Call a Wrecking Ball to Make a Window.” The map plots the intersections of Agid’s own history with that of the famous activist/artist/writer David Wojnarowicz, who died of AIDS in 1992. Agid is making sure that queer voices persist in the face of ongoing threats.
Another approach to the book is Ben Blount’s “Africans in America: A Short History.” The book features many blank pages and then we come to a date in which something significant happened for African Americans. The book is open to 1964, the year the Civil Rights Act was passed “prohibiting discrimination of all kinds based on race, color, religion, or national origins.”
Delita Martin uses multiple techniques to create “This Side of Night,” a huge book with lavish images and text: “My black woman body created a world under the moon…where black birds gather, their bodies shimmer a blue black, wings moving to the ancient rhythms of time, over and over, all at once around me, their bodies weight, stretched long on this side of night.”
Martin is both magical and vividly present on these large pages.
Another sizable book that uses multiple techniques is by Robbin Ami Silverberg and Kim Berman, “RE—A Tale of Two Cities,” the cities being New York and Johannesburg, with text like “reclaim, retrieve, recover, reuse, recycle…”
“Ten Years in Uzbekistan,” originally designed by Alexander Rodchenko, was discovered in an archive. David King, a historian of Russian photography, found it with the faces blacked out as people fell out of favor. David King and Ken Campbell re-presented the book with letterpress printed over half-tone photographs. The result is a haunting way to honor these people, whose names and biographies remain present in the text.
The pioneering role of Cynthia Sears in collecting artists’ books, combined with the diverse selection by curator Catherine Alice Michaelis, highlights the museum’s inclusive approach to acquisition, and its openness to a wide range of printing techniques, subject matters, and formats, from simple broadsides to books that unfold. This exhibit is an exciting revelation of the democratic and community-building power of print.
Susan Noyes Platt
Susan Noyes Platt writes for local, national, and international publications and her website, www.artandpoliticsnow.com.
“Power of the Presses” is on view through June 8 at Bainbridge Island Museum of Art, located at 550 Winslow Way East, on Bainbridge Island, Washington. Museum is open daily from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. For further information, visit www.biartmuseum.org.
