Dionysus Press ~Pennsylvania
(Dennis Marsico)

Right Noise
By Dennis Marsico
2004. Edition of 100 (half scale edition)
2004. Edition of 25 (museum edition)

24 pages with 16 pigmented photographs. Original images photographed between 2000 and 2004. Screen images inserted digitally. Images printed using pigmented inks on 100% cotton paper. Text set in Gill Sans and transferred onto polymer plates by Boxcar Press. Twinrocker handmade the text paper. Letterpress printed on a Vandercook proofing press. Anodized aluminum and acrylic sheet used in the fabrication of the slipcase. Designed, digitally printed, letterpress printed and bound by Marsico.In a slipcase of metal and plastic.

Photo-essay. Pointedly delicious satire. "Right Noise" is "Right Wing Noise."

Photographer/designer feels that "'Right Noise'" has quietly and methodically infiltrated the American household via airwaves, satellites, and cables. Religion and politics are the dramatis personae portraying liberal behavior as the villain. Right Noise, the photo-essay, witnesses its numbing effects."

Half scale edition (8.5 x 5.25") $500
Museum edition (7.5 x 11") $1200

Policing Pleasure
By Dennis Marsico
2004. Edition of 100.

6 x 10"; 28 pages. 16 pigmented photographs. Housed in handcrafted hardwood slipcase. Images printed using pigmented inks on 100% cotton paper. Handmade Japanese gampi paper interleaf between text and plates. Text set in Plantin and transferred onto polymer plates by Boxcar Press. Text paper handmade by Twinrocker. Letterpress printed on a Vandercook proofing press. Digitally printed, letterpress printed and bound by the photographer.

Dennis Marsico: "The churches and cathedrals of Italy's renaissance stir the senses from the moment the threshold is crossed. The sheer volume of the space, the interweaving of textures, the silence, the smells, the artificial light mixing with diffused daylight, the local patrons, the tourists, the constant renovation, all compete for attention. But for me, the focus has always been the art and the confessionals; the art provokes fantasies as the confessionals provoke guilt, the yin-yang of the roman church. "Policing Pleasure" pays homage to this dichotomy.

"Policing Pleasure," the book, is a companion to an extensive portfolio project. "The original images were photographed between 1988 and 1995 in Emilia Romagna, Umbria and Tuscany. The emergence of the fantasized deities in some of the photographs miraculously and digitally occurred in 2002."
$600

Canto V
By Dante Alighieri
an English translation by Robert Pinsky
photographs by Dennis Marsico
2004. Edition of 100.

6 x 10"; 28 pages. Includes 16 pigmented photographs. Housed in handcrafted hardwood slipcase. Images printed with pigmented inks on 100% cotton paper. Text set in Garamond and transferred onto polymer plates by Boxcar Press. Text paper handmade by Twinrocker. Letterpress printed on a Vandercook proofing press. Digitally printed, letterpress printed and bound by the photographer.

From the colophon: "Canto V of the Inferno was reenacted and photographed in the turbulent hellish waters of a hot tub in Pittsburgh."

    All light is mute, with a bellowing like the ocean
    Turbulent in a storm of warring winds,
    The hurricane of Hell in perpetual motion
    Sweeping the ravaged spirits as it rends,
    Twists, and tourments them. Driven as if to land,
    They reach the ruin: groaning, tears, laments,
    And cursing of the power of Heaven. I learned
    They suffer here who sinned in carnal things
    Their reason mastered by desire, suborned.
               from Canto V of The Inferno

$600

Blind Desire
By Jeffrey Thomson
2005. Edition of 50.

11.25 x 11.25"; 24 pages. Eight pigmented photographs with Braille emboss of poem. In addition two Braille embossed poems. Text set in Bembo and transferred onto polymer plates by Boxcar Press. Text paper Somerset Book and letterpress printed on a Vandercook proofing press. Quarter bound with Iris rayon and Hewit bookcalf. Photographs printed on Concorde Rag with pigmented inks. Photographs Braille embossed using plates made by the American Printing House for the Blind. Digitally printed, letterpress printed and bound by the photographer.

Blind Desire is one of a trilogy of books published for the left-perimeter of the exhibit "Messages and Communications" at the Mattress Factory Museum in Pittsburgh. Marsico asked three poets to address the topics of passion and politics. Jeff Thomson side tracked the politics and made a direct path to the sensuous. With touch being so much a part of personal passions "Blind Desire" is bilingually printed in English and Braille.

    Roads bustling with absent traffic, the mutter of all
    conversations that have yet to happen, two bodies
    cinched together at the gluttonouse mouth.
    (lines from blind desire I)

$550