| Joyce Cutler-Shaw ~ California | |
| Miniature Book by Joyce Cutler-Shaw | |
The Sycamore Leaf Canopy 7 x 5.4" closed; 10.75 x 4.5" open. Panoramic slide-out box. Illustrated with black-and-white photographs. Signed by the artist. The City of San Diego Library Department and The City of San Diego Commission for Arts and culture commissioned The Sycamore Leaf Canopy in 2002 for the Mission Valley Branch Library. The theme of the library branch is the San Diego River, a prime natural resource of San Diego's Mission Valley. The riverbanks are a habitat of native California sycamore trees which inspired this design by Cutler-Shaw. The installation consists of eight columns, visual metaphors for the sheltering bower of a tree. The columns are 16 by 16 foot sections of quarter inch plasma cut steel. Each section is set within one of the eight structural columns, which support the arched library ceiling. Cutler-Shaw produced this black and white slide-out artist book to commemorate the installation. |
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The Railing of the Wild River Grasses Mixed media fanfold book with bark cover. The City of San Diego Library Department and The City of San Diego Commission for Arts and Culture commissioned three art installations for the Mission Valley Branch Library in 2002. The theme of the library branch is the San Diego River, a prime natural resource of San Diego's Mission Valley. The riverbanks are a habitat of native California wild river grasses which inspired this design by Cutler-Shaw. The installation of the Railing of Wild River Grasses consists of thirty-nine etched glass panels, each from a unique drawing, 42 inches high, and from 22 to 53 inches wide, of quarter inch tempered glass, for the balcony and staircase. Cutler-Shaw produced this fan-fold book to commemorate the installation. |
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The Cage of Wild Branches 7.25 x 7.25" closed; 10.25 x 7.25" open slide-out book. Cutler-Shaw was commissioned by California Pacific Homes, a division of the Irvine Company, to create a gateway sculpture for Stonecrest Village, a major housing development in San Diego, California. She proposed this work as a conversation between the unpredictable landscape of nature - of wild birds and grasses - and the built environment. The sculpture of hand-forged steel is in two parts on facing street corners. Each is an open half seventeen feet high by eighteen feet wide at the outer edge, by thirteen feet deep of a whole circular cage. Seen from certain angles, there is the illusion that each is a fully closed circular form rather than half of a divided whole. An angle of metal loops and coils, as vines, wind about the sides and rounded tops, where the silhouettes of five birds in flight are toward the opposite corner. Cutler-Shaw created this slide-out artist book to commemorate this public art sculpture.$100 |
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Lost and Found in the Garden of Wild Birds and Grasses 19 x 19 cm folded accordion star fold in black and white. Slipped in envelope. A twelve part continuously unfolding paper narrative. Shaped like a fortune teller, the book's four corners open out to reveal successive layers of the artist's calligraphies - the first being her alphabet of bones, based on the hollow bones of birds, the next an alphabet based on the silhouettes of wild birds. The most interior layers of the book show photographs of an environment of grasses and branches, and at the final opening, the book becomes a single sheet on the back of which is printed an explanatory text and the translation of a poem in The Alphabet of Bones. |
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Elegy for the Natural World 12 x 23 cm. Printed in black on translucent white vellum. Bound in handmade paper to resemble bark. An accordion fold artist's book that duplicates Joyce Cutler Shaw's 65' by 3'' public installation of large scale drawings of sycamore branches, cascading leaves and silhouettes of wild birds. The book was conceived as a result of the installation and as a homage to our disappearing natural landscape. |
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Three Cages Handprinted in a triangular accordion format which measures 4 1/8 x 8 1/4" when closed and opens to a full length of 64". Text is typeset in the Alphabet of Bones, an original calligraphic font based on the hollow bones of birds. Printed on 100% cotton fabric Clearprint with cotton fiber museum board covers. The imprinted wrapper is self-folding. Book folded into triangular shapes with text facing each other. Signed and numbered. The winning entry in a juried competition of small book concepts for publication by the Center for Book Arts in New York.
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Aikido Conversations 12 x 16", 46 loose pages, with 19 drawings including two triptychs printed in black ink. Produced by offset printing with drawings on Somerset 100% cotton rag paper. Texts are on alternating pages of cotton vellum and Strathmore cotton. Printed in wine red, dark blue, pale green, and grey on the vellum overlays. Typeface for text is Adobe Sanvto. In hand-assembled box with handmade Umbra Marine paper from Thailand with Japanese handmade patterned paper lining. Bone closures for box. This collaboration between artist Joyce Cutler-Shaw and aikidoist Coryl Crane began with Cutler-Shaw drawing at Crane's dojo as an investigation of the connection between movement and breath. Aikido is more than a martial art; it is a way of being, with breath at the center. In contrast, the process of drawings as practiced by Cutler-Shaw is a way of knowing and an act of empathy. Crane comments on the making of this book: “I have attempted, in the text of this book, to reflect the aikido experience, to share some of the guidelines of my on training and to express many of the paradoxes that confuse and ultimately enrich one's understanding of art.” Cutler-Shaw comments: “Such as "In stillness movement and in movement stillness." Which reminds me of the problems I encountered in drawing the act of bowing. How difficult it as when you held still in the bow position. It never worked. The drawing was lifeless. What the drawing required in this case, was my understanding of bowing as a continuous movement.”
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Page last update: 06.03.07
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