Larkspur Press ~Kentucky
(Gray Zeitz)

Collaborations with James Baker Hall
Poetry Collaborations

"James Baker Hall (1935-2009), significantly known for his work as a writer, was a former Poet Laureate of Kentucky and the author of many essential works of southern literature. He was an equally prolific art photographer, lecturing widely on the medium. He was a former contributing editor for Aperture, and his own work published in over half a dozen collections of photographs. He was a member of the famed Lexington Camera Club and the trusted colleague of such photographers as Minor White, Richard Benson, and Ralph Eugene Meatyard. His photographs are part of public and private art holdings, including the permanent collections of University of Kentucky Art Museum in Lexington, KY and 21C Museum in Louisville, KY."

Ed McClanahan, ACE Weekly, 2 July 2009: "Jim Hall was a consummate artist. His aesthetic, both as a writer and as a photographer, was demanding and exacting; he was, in the bests and truest sense of the word, a perfectionist, yet his work was sometimes fearlessly experimental, sometimes downright, playful, but always adventurous, always testing the limits, pushing the line back. He could stand the language of poetry on its ear, and make his camera show you things you'd never even dreamed of."

James Baker Hall and his friends Wendell Berry, Gurney Norman, and Ed McClanahan were students in the University of Kentucky English Department in the 1950s. From 1958 to 1962 the four had Wallace Stegner Fellowships in Creative Writing at Stanford University, and were part of the famous group that included Larry McMurtry and Ken Kesey.

Orphans & Elegies
By James Baker Hall
Monterey, Kentucky: Larkspur Press, 2009. Edition of 26.

Broadsides: 14 x 11"; 4 single sheets. Photos: 20 x 16"; 8 single giclée prints. Type set by hand in Cloister Lightface. Printed with a hand fed C&P on Gampi Torinoko paper made in Japan. Giclée prints produced by James Baker Hall. Case (20.75 x 17 x 1.25") covered in Japanese bookbinding cloth and Gampi Torinoko paper by Gabrielle Fox. Designed with interior cloth covered board to sit on top of the prints. Interior board provides housing for the broadsides. White gloves attached to interior board for handling prints and images.

The portfolio of four broadsides and eight photographs by Hall were published in honor of the exhibition "Photo/Synthesis: James Baker Hall" at 21C Museum, Louisville, Kentucky open from September 2008 - April 2009.

Photo/Synthesis, 21C Museum, 2009: "21c Museum is proud to present Photo/Synthesis: James Baker Hall, the first survey of photographic work by James Baker Hall, whose photographs depict the varied landscapes and creative personalities of his native Kentucky, while foregrounding the sensory experience of the work itself. The seventy images drawn from the collection of the artist represent a body of work that examine Hall's fascination and experimentation of photography since his childhood.

"It has been said that James Baker Hall is both a photographer who writes and a writer who takes pictures. This exhibition explores yet another notion, that James Baker Hall is also a painter who makes photographs. 21c has worked closely with the artist to realize an ambitious exhibition comprising nearly five decades of photographic pursuits.

"While Hall is perhaps best known for his more traditional photographic books such as A Spring Fed Pond, 2000 or Tobacco Harvest: An Elegy, 2004, he has simultaneously been creating a body of work that continues to challenge the notion that photography is merely representational. Instead, Hall's photographs often take on a more painterly quality such as his Orphans in the Attic and Appear to Disappear series. Similar to painting, Hall is able to record the experience of observation and capture the impression of a landscape or his subject.

"Accompanying this exhibition, Larkspur letterpress, a longtime
collaborator of Hall's, has printed a selection of eight poems by Hall that further exemplify the artist's mastery of diverse mediums."

Larkspur Press, Orphans & Elegies: "This book renders trauma and resolve through four broadsides of James Baker Hall's poems and eight of Hall's photographs. The poems are "Traveling" and "Organdy Curtains, Window, South Bank of the Ohio" from Stopping on the Edge to Wave (1988) and "It Felt So Good But Many Times I Cried" and "That First Kite" from The Mother on the Other Side of the World (1999). Photographs: Orphans & Elegies; Boy Face Halfed; Young Anne; Jimmy Red Dot; Bride; Egyptian Woman Elegy; Dancing Child, Matthew in Doorway."
$5,000

Firesticks
By James Baker Hall
Monterey, Kentucky: Larkspur Press, 2008. Edition of 26.

11.5 x 14.5" black cloth-covered portfolio case with ribbon ties. Paper
letterfold adhered to back pastedown contains 3 photographs and 4 broadsides plus a sheet with the Colophon. Handset text in Cloister Lightface type. Letterpress printed with a hand-fed C & P onto Gampi Torinoko paper, handmade in Japan. Photographs giclée prints printed by James Baker Hall. Case handbound in Japanese bookbinding cloth and Curtis paper.

A portfolio honoring rural Kentucky, Firesticks includes four broadsides of James Baker Hall's poems, printed by Larkspur Press, and three of Hall’s photographs printed by himself.

A native Kentuckian, in 2001 Hall was named the Poet Laureate of the Commonwealth of Kentucky. He was a graduate if the University of Kentucky with a B.A. in English and received a Wallace Stegner Fellowship in Creative Writing at Stanford University. He began teaching at the University of Kentucky in 1973 and for the next thirty years acted as director of the creative writing program. In 2003, he retired as professor emeritus.

The poems: "Dividing Ridge," "Pulse," and "The Relinquishments" from "Stopping on the Edge to Wave" (1988); "With Deer" from The Mother on the Other Side of the World (1999).

The photographs: Cave Horse, Red Sky Cows, and Horse Head Torque.
$1,500

A Guide to the Four-Chambered Heart
By John Haines
Monterey, Kentucky: Larkspur Press, 1996. Edition of 50.

6.125 x 9.25"; 54 pages. Handset in Eric Gill's Joanna type and printed on a hand-fed C & P. Printed on dampened Johannot. Illustrations by Joy Haines. Handbound by Carolyn Whitesel in her own decorated papers over boards. In cream dust jacket. Design, composition, and presswork by Laverne Zabielski and Gray Zeitz. Signed by Joy Haines and John Haines.

John Haines (1924 – 2011), winner of a lifetime achievement award from the Library of Congress, was an American poet and educator who had served as the poet laureate of Alaska. He published nine collections of poetry.
$80 (Four copies remaining)