For Boys Who Dream of War
By Alan Govenar (text) & Caren Heft (book design, printing, production)
2005. Edition of 49.
16 pages. Triangular book (17" spine x 12" x 12": 8.5" at its widest point resting in triangular box - 25" x 17.75" x 17.75": 12.5" at its widest point). Each page on Root River Mill Paper made by Jeff Morin, Brain Borchardt and Caren Heft, or Hahnemuhle paper sized and tinted. Type: Gill Sans. Open sewn spine with silver colored boards that are lightly marked to form a pattern with a cutout of an airplane in black and gray on the front board. Each different-colored page opens up as a square. Pages are edged with stars, the USA flag, or statistics relating to the Vietnam War.
The book is laid in a scorched and black-paint-splattered triangular wooden box with magnet closure. The box is padded inside with soft reddish cloth. On the box’s top is a silver metal star, while on the inside is a plastic toy airplane. The book rests on top of an American flag (folded into a triangle). Set in the padded base of the box are a 2.75" glass figure of a wounded soldier (inscribed either with the number of American military dead in Vietnam or the number of Vietnamese civilians killed or wounded) and a small metal WWII first aid kit containing wound dressing, sulfa powder and instructions.
This work bites its tongue, but the anti-war rage is barely in check. The left pages list the women who died in Vietnam. The right pages combine a mix of gung-ho-young-lad-playing-war and the story of LCDR Smokey Tolbert, much decorated flyer and Blue Angel, who was shot down over Vietnam. The official report of that downing seems questionable. Commander Tolbert’s remains were suddenly “discovered” by the Vietnamese and returned 16 years after his downing.
He stands here for the waste and indignity that awaits “boys who dream of war.”
Every statistic and story in this work repeats or is enveloped by its triangular shape, the shape the US flag that drapes coffins is folded into before it’s presented to the next of kin.
$1750 |
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Martyr Mercury Rooster
By [Arcadian Press / sailorBOYpress] Caren Heft & Jeffrey Morin
2004. Edition of 50.
12 x 8.75". Three individual books of handmade paper, housed in a 13 x 10 x 2.5" clamshell cloth covered box. Papers: Root River Mill cotton, Larroque, and Hahnemuhle. The Hahnemuhle gelatin sized (with pigment added-in). Typeface throughout: Cochin Light.
This powerful, exquisitely rendered 3-volume collaboration between Caren Heft of Arcadian Press and Jeffrey Morin of sailorBOYpress is done in the spirit of the ars moriendi (the art of dying), 15th-century Christian texts with instructions about how to die well developed (perhaps) in response to the Black Plague. Heft and Morin use the format ironically to look contemporary scourges: suicide bombers, the destructive effect of mercury in the environment, AIDS. The woodcuts from the Middle Age-originals are replaced by an assemblage of tape, pins, stitchery, beads, and pieces of metal. The effect is powerful, even overwhelming.
[From the colophons of the 3 volumes]
Martyr: "As a contemporary ars moriendi, this book deals with death, specifically the first Palestinian female bomber, Wafa Idris. It is an attempt to understand why a young woman would strap a belt bomb over her womb and set if off in a public place where victims could be children, elderly or pregnant women. Yasser Arafat, who exhorted women to die for the liberation of Palestine, died during the printing of this book.
"Suicide bombers are currently the weapon of choice for terrorist organizations. They are low-cost, use unsophisticated technology, are readily available, require little training and strike fear into the hearts of the population. Women have an added advantage, as in the Muslim world they are searched gingerly. World-wide, women are perceived as non-violent, adding an element of surprise. Suicide bombers attain extensive media coverage for their organizations as casualties are often high. Media coverage is a good recruitment tool and furthers political agenda."
Mercury: "What child does not remember finding some excuse to play with mercury in a science class? That same child probably has some memory related to fishing. We all share the image that opened the Andy Griffith Show where father and son walk a country road on the way to their favorite fishing hole. Did anyone expect that today’s childhood memories would intertwine mercury and fishing in such a dangerous way? In most counties in Wisconsin, the Department of Natural Resources limits the consumption of fish as well as the daily catch limit."
Rooster: "In fifteenth century Europe, the level of literacy had been on the decline. Ars Moriendi were picture manuals for one’s preparation to meet death. On one level they were intended to ease the transition and prepare one’s family for the coming loss. On another level, these manuals were a form of propaganda, advising the soon-to-be-departed to give heavily to the Church to guarantee a better place in Heaven or at least a seat further from the flames of Hell.
"This book is one of three that deal with modern forms of death that visit a population. In this case it is the presence of AIDS in Africa and how a culture responds to and interprets the mortal threat. Sibongile’s story comes from 'Child rape: A taboo within the AIDS taboo; More and more girls are being raped by men who believe this will "cleanse" them of the disease, but people don't want to confront the issue," Sunday Times, South Africa, April 4, 1999, by Prega Govender. It is combined with the story of Gumha and the Large Rooster as told by the Sukuma Research Committee. The two unrelated stories have been blended together to create a modern narrative that sets the stage for confronting death."
$2,250 |
Martyr
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Mercury
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Rooster
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Cold Earth
By Alan Govenar
1999-2002. Edition of 30.
14' x 18" x 11" open.
An accordion fold book printed letterpress on Fabriano Uno paper. Letterpress-printed plates from photographs of tattooed women (breasts). The images were sold and traded as soft porm from the 1920s - 1950s. The images are overlaid with a poem by Govenar.
It is a comment on relationships, the indelible marks they leave on us, how the fervor of passion leaves us changed but in a totally different way than the experience itself. The unerotic nature of the tattooed women mocks the passion that soft porn makes mockery of. The poem seems to be the last stanza of another relationship over, another spadefull of cold earth heaped on our desires.
Caren Heft: "I see it as a continuation of my books about women. I am really interested in women and the choices they have been allowed and not allowed, how they have chosen to use their bodies ..."
A large relief print letter press accordion fold book with a provocative and poetic anthropological illumination of women's tatooed breasts.
$1,500
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Pagan Babies
By Roger David, Barbara Duffey Hardy, Pat Kardas, Susan Mann
Racine, Wisconsin: 1995. Edition of 59.
6 x 9" with 22 pages. Letterpress book on Root River Mill abaca paper with found pages of a letterpress printed Bible from the 1860s. Type is Gill Light from Horsfall & Sons Ltd. Printed by Caye Christensen. Root River Mill abaca made by Michael Nitsch. The hot foil stamping done by Fred L. Jaenecke of Commercial Rule in Milwaukee. The Bible pages are from The Holy Bible, containing The Old and New Testaments, Translated Out of The Original Tongues And With The Former Translations Diligently Compared and Revised, published in New York by the American Bible Society in 1862.
"Pagan Babies" is an account of a missions fund-raising technique used by the Catholic Church in the 1940s and 1950s. Heft says the idea for the book came about when her colleagues at the Wustum Museum told pagan baby stories over lunch one day.
Caren Heft: "Oral history has long been an interest of mine and of the press. It seems to me that not enough documentation is done on the small things which go into making each of us an adult human being. My grandmother, who died in the 1980s at 97 years old, used to take me to the backyard of her house, point out her huge mulberry tree filled with purple stained grandchildren and say "Someone must write this down, someone must tell people how it was." Unfortunately, I didn't realize how much I valued what she knew until she died."
$200 |
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