Bird Press ~ Massachusetts
(Thorsten Dennerline)

The Man Who Fell Upwards
By Thorsten Dennerline
Hadley, Massachusetts: Bird Press, 2005. Edition of 15.

15.5 x 22.75"; 10 pages. Ten copper plate etchings developed over the course of a year. Chine collé sheets made and printed on DUFA IVA press in four colors onto Japanese Sekishu paper. Backing sheets from St. Armand Papeterie (Montréal).

Purists, even most non-purists, won't consider this an artists' book. Clearly it is more accurately labeled a portfolio of prints. These chine collé etchings take Chilean Vincente Huidobro's epic Altazor as its starting point. Huidobro is often compared with Apollinaire, and Octavio Paz called Altazor "the most radical experiment in the modern era." But artists' book manqué or not, The Man Who Fell Upwards will delight those who admire Dennerline's work, his cunning social and political commentary that combines the absurd and the grotesque to illustrate all too familiar truths. It is not hard to see how Dennerline found in the wild and wooly Huidobro a kindred sprit.

Thorsten Dennerline: "Between 1919-1931, Vincente Huidobro wrote Altazor: The Voyage in a Parachute. This poem described a journey that begins by falling through space/time/memory. The explosive intensity of Huidobro's writing seems to come from what he himself describes as the 'super-conscious'. I used this epic poem as a starting point for working on these images and, as expected, the image making process eventually strayed away from Altazor into another imaginary space. The background imagery depicts anatomical images from Chile, Huidobro's birthplace, delineating a small cosmos within the greater cosmos of infinite possibilities. With the exception of the last image, which ends the series by presenting an answer to all questions - the blank banner, the prints may be viewed in any order."

The process: the black images were first developed on the etching plates and then digitally photographed. The underlying color images were then developed on the computer and printed as four-color lithographs on Japanese paper. They were then used as chine collé sheets to be printed with the etching.
$3,500

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Lover Loser
Diagram Poems by Egil Dennerline and Thorsten Dennerline
With lithographs by Thorsten Dennerline
Hadley, Massachusetts: Bird Press, 2003. Edition of 24.

6 x 9.75 x 1.5"; 70 pages. Color lithographs were hand printed by the artist at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst on DUFA IV press. The texts were written by Egil Dennerline in Denmark (text marked with the letter "E") and by Thorsten Dennerline in the United States (text marked with letter "T"). Paper handmade by St. Armand Papeterie (Montreal). Printed at Wild Carrot Letterpress (Hadley, Massachusetts). Bindings designed by the artist and executed in full burnt-orange leather with exposed stab binding by Barry Spence at the Open Book Bindery (Shelburne Falls, Massachusetts). Housed in a solander box. Of the edition, the first 20 are numbered 1-20, and the remaining 4 are special copies numbered I - IV.

A series of diagram poems and idiosyncratic lithographs full of irony, wit, and spleen.

Colophon: "This book has been on the drawing board for quite some time. It was started in the summer of 2000 as a side project, where the idea took shape. In the summer of 2002 and in the aftermath of September 11, the project went into production."

Thorsten and Egil Dennerline, Introduction: "We humans are flawed in that we can't admit we're animals. And that like machines, we are constantly bent on our own destruction. Anti-intellectualism and rampant consumerism ('Greed is good') are only making matters worse. In this book, useless bodies, animals and machines merge and become our ultimate nightmare. They desire and hate, without understanding why. Dissatisfaction pervades them and they fill the void by surrounding themselves with accessories. Lover-Loser asks the obvious question: What is the price for happiness, today?

"These diagram poems are inspired by the ridiculousness of this human condition. In the tradition of Vicente Huidobro and Guillaume Apollinaire, the poems become drawings and are held together with lines, shapes and arrows. By printing texts on translucent papers, image and text are drawn ever closer. In this way, we add a depth and versatility of meaning to our impressions and lace them with a little bit of humor, because sometimes there is nothing left to do but laugh!"
$2,000

Teach Me, Star of Night!
Lær Mig, Nattens Stjerne!
By Peter Laugesen
Hadley, Massachusetts: Bird Press, 2000. Edition of 55.

11 x 9.75"; 32 pages. Cast and set in the Perpetua typeface at the Letterfoundry of Michael and Winifred Bixler in Skaneateles, New York. With 8 etchings executed and printed by hand by Thorsten Dennerline with the help of Magaly Ponce. Bilingual text (Danish & English) printed by Daniel Keleher at Wild Carrot Letterpress in Hadley, Massachusetts. Binding designed by Thorsten Dennerline and made by Peter Verheyen, in Syracuse, New York. Of the 55 books printed, 1-40 are numbered in a regular edition, and 10 special bindings are numbered I-X. A set of 5 unique artists proof bindings are numbered AP1 - AP5. This is one of the regular edition. Sewn on 5 raised alum-tawed thongs. Buttonhole stitch endbands; spine covered in vellum; boards covered in quarter vellum with Japanese bookcloth sides; title and ornament stamped in black.

Eight poems by Peter Laugesen printed in Danish and English (translated from the original Danish by Susanne Jorn). Laugesen, in addition to being a poet, also works as an art critic, journalist, and translator. He has worked with poetry as painting ("writing on the wall"), as music and theatre, and has also translated Antonin Artaud, Heiner Müller, Gunnar Björling, Charles Olson, Georg Büchner, Heinrich von Kleist, Peter Handke, Novalis, William Shakespeare and others.

Painter and printmaker Dennerline produces artists' books that include his own lithographs, etchings, and wood block prints. He uses images of the absurd and the grotesque to represent aspects of interpersonal relationships with psychological and political implications. His attraction to poetry and in the interaction between text and image has led him to engage in collaborative projects with writers, poets, and other artists.

Thorsten Dennerline: "When people ask what my work is about, I often list a number of common threads that go through it. The first thread is my interest in poetry. The second is my interest in the relationship between text and image. The third is my interest in collaboration. Finally comes my interest in the grotesque and in animal imagery to depict my observations of human interaction or behavior. These interests manifest themselves in various combinations in most of my book projects and paintings."
$1,000