Fine Press Friday: The Poetry of Chance Encounters
Minneapolis visual artist Harriet Bart, fine-press printer Philip Gallo of The Hermetic Press, and bookbinder Jill Jevne are the recipients of the 2015 Minnesota Book Artist Award for their latest collaboration, Ghost Maps. Since 2000, Bart, Gallo, and Jevne have collaborated to produce ten artist books, two of which have been honored with Minnesota Book Awards in the Fine Press category. To celebrate this year's achievement, we present one of those earlier award-winning collaborations, The Poetry of Chance Encounters published in 2003, and the recipient of the 2004 Minnesota Book Award for Fine Press. The book was conceived and directed by Harriet Bart through her Mnemonic Press imprint, and printed in collaboration with Philip Gallo at The Hermetic Press in a limited edition of 35 copies and 5 artist's proofs on Rives BFK paper. Jill Jevne bound the edition in full goatskin leather with a single raised band, and created the slipcase with gold paste paper by Claire Maziarcyzk and an edging of goatskin over boards.
Harriet Bart describes The Poetry of Chance Encounters as "a contemporary book of devotions, an illuminated manuscript of surrealist games of chance. It brings together in evocative pairings of image and text, the artist’s love of the written language and her passion for the found objects that have been part of the iconography of her sculpture for years." The book contains sixteen visual poems on multi-color fields, each imprinted with an icon in 22 karat gold. Each page has a total of five press runs, including a varnish over the icon and field, giving the icon an embossed appearance on the page. Although very complex in its assemblage, the overall treatment of the book is spare, presenting a progression of striking glyphic spaces covering the span of human encoding.
Congratulations Harriet, Phil, and Jill!!
Find it in the catalog here.
