Books II: Intro

Our Book project is not elegiac. Rather, it’s a celebration, a paean or praise to the “book.” We should be clear that the “book” is as much the subject of our project as it is the object, i.e., our attention focuses on the material, the physicality of books, their “thingness;” but, aesthetic and sculptural as books may be, they are primarily functional and their form fits their function. We have consciously tried to keep this in mind while making visual exclamations as to their happy presence in our lives. We are, after all, bibliophiles and readers — as well as artists.

For the most part we have not approached our objects — singular or plural — with fixed ideas. The start point has been a particular book, a set, or a group of books, and some general mental concept from which we might begin. Most often the process has been protracted, leading to extended sessions and not infrequently complete restarts. Only a very few of the final images resemble their originating idea. Almost none happened, as they say, in one take: arrange, focus, snap, done.