| Lois Morrison ~ New Jersey | |
The Doll Series |
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Geryon's Country 9 x 5.5" tunnel book with envelope fold attached to contain "paper doll" of Geryon. Color-copied from crayon drawings. Gocco-printed and color penciled onto digital color supreme glossy recycled Arches text wove and Fabriano Tiziano lava red. Typeface if Font Lister: Font Book #68. Handcut, grommetted and assembled. Wrapped in lined cloth with button closures. Embroidered runes on the cloth wrap. Text by Morrison on exterior accordion sides of the tunnel book. In Greek Mythology Hercules had to perform twelve Labors for penance of the murder of his wife and children. The tenth of these Labors was to steal the cattle of Geryon from an island called Erythia, which was near the boundary of Europe and Libya. In the execution of this theft Hercules kills Geryon and the two headed dog who guards them. Geryon is described has being red, incredibly strong with six arms and legs. While Geryon may not have been the most attractive fellow he was after all protecting his property. Few remember that in the execution of the Twelve Labors Hercules actually committed a series of crimes. At the beginning of the "Autobiography of Red," Anne Carson translates fragments of Stesichoros' "Geryoneis" that show Geryon as far more vulnerable and gives him a red dog that Hercules clubs to death. Stesichoros also gives Geryon a pair of wings and has Hercules split his skull with a single arrow. Thus, he dies protecting his mythical herd of red cattle from Hercules. Carson recasts the Geryon Labor as a contemporary homosexual love affair. In Morrison's representation two Geryons share the pocket on the back of the tunnel book along with a red dog. These 'paper' Geryons can be placed in the tunnel book among the cattle. As one manipulates the Geryons and "reads" the story of the Labor, Morrison charges the reader to "Believe what you will." |
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| The Doll Series | |
In the Land of Shadows 8 x 10 x 5.75"; six-panel book to be folded in two directions with Japanese screen hinges. Section backgrounds color-copied. Green layered linoleum cuts, printed onto Tyvek. Figures Gocco-printed onto Cross Pointe's Synergy, text onto oriental paper. Figures float on .007 music wires. Typeface Kids. Cover hand-dyed ticking over board. Hand-cut and assembled. A book of four shadows: two physical - the actual shadow that light throws and the cut-out outline of each figure; two psychological- reflections of events, the shadow of what had happened earlier to cause them to be assembled so bizarrely and the arrival of the black menace that hangs in the sky over their heads. |
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The Mechanical Baby 6.25 x 4.5"; 8 spreads. Accordion fold Color xeros pop-outs. Gocco prints on Magnani Pescia paper; Amherst type. Color copied dolls laminated onto acid-free drawing paper. Color Gocco-printed cotton over board covers with ribbon ties. Hand cut and assembled. In this third installment in her saga of the dolls, and following her practice of using found objects as inspiration, Morrison continues to explore survival and aloneness in an oddly melancholic, yet hopeful tale. (I recall a line from Emily Dickinson: "After great pain, a formal feeling comes . . .") In this edition, the actual "baby" of the title is a rusty old toy that, wires exposed, is missing a head and is crouched in an eternal crawling position. Color Xerox pop-outs of the doll, photographed from different vantage points, crawl across a black and white, Gocco-printed, accordion-fold landscape that was drawn from the terrain around the artist's summer residence. There is the suggestion of autonomy, the survival of the spirit, inherent in the series, which began with her titles, The Hollow Dolls (1998) and After (1999). The lonely, isolated determination of the mechanical baby is an emblem of will, which moves us forward in the face of despair despite the odds. The terrain could be the landscape of memory or loss, at once a shared and an individual experience. With spare text, the pages are haunting, dreamlike. The reader is drawn into an altered world, and perhaps touches an altered, contemplative state.
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After 8.5 x 5.5"; four folds. Accordion fold. On Canson me Tientes and Masa papers. Hand cut and assembled. Thai Soft Unru paper over boards. Text, illustration, and binding by Lois Morrison. This accordion fold book tells the story of a gathering of broken dolls following a disaster. "After it was all over they gathered and found the world was as beautiful as ever," but they had been changed. In the middle two folds of the book, the dolls float above the long drawing of an herbaceous border. Color-copied background landscapes, photographs of broken dolls, and Gocco printed black and white missing doll parts. |
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| Biblical Related Work: Books by Lois Morrison with text and image based on a biblical passage. | |
The Wind 11.25 x 13.5" Handmade cloth book. Housed in letter fold case with button and thread closure. Sewn cloth images based on King James version John 3:8: "The wind blows wherever it pleases. You hear its sound, but you cannot tell where it comes from or where it is going. So it is with everyone born of the Spirit." |
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Through a Glass Darkly 7.5" x 9.3 x .85". Multiple images, transparent and other, are laminated between distressed plastic. Bound together by brass rings. The base and case are covered with bunting from a 4th of July celebration. A plastic mirror is laminated to the base. The case is lined with Lana Ingres and secured with beads and tape. The text, 1 Corinthians 13:12 King James Bible, is hand lettered on scratch-lite. Four blue plastic pages with darkly seen images and text unfold one by one to reveal a mirror in which one sees "face-to-face."
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The Gadarene Swine: Luke 8:26-33 & Later 5.25 x 3.25" A two part book, enclosed in single case with red cloth boards using a button and crewel clasp. Two accordion books laid-in folded green paper which is attached to the interior boards. One fold-out is the Biblical text from the King James version of the Bible with illustrations. The second fold-out text "Later" is written by Lois Morrison who also illustrated, lettered, and bound this total production. Printed on Lenox 100 and Arches Text Wove with a Gocco Printer. Returned to with watercolor and ink. SIGNED by Morrison. A tunnel book tells the biblical story of the swine jumping off the cliff and drowning. An accordion-fold book tells what happens later as people begin breeding the Gadarene swine.
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| The Natural Order of Things: Morrison observes and documents the creatures in our world from the crawly ones to those that soar in the sky. | |
Turkey Trot 9.75 x 5". Purple green and yellow exterior with turkey skin? Printed by Gocco printer. Typeface is Ill Omen Pink paper for wrapping tacos. Cover is cloth over board with turkey feet fro Mexico City. Plastic Tyvek and Frasia'a passport paper. Some turkeys are laser printed, some by Gocco. Morrison's adaptation of the song recorded by Nancy Sinatra, "These boots are made for walking," into a 'turkey trot.'
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Incarnations Color copied and printed with a Gocco printer then returned to with Pigma Micron pens, colored pencil, water colors and Painters medium opaque paint marker. Type: Bard. Hand-cut, grommeted, assembled and bound. Fine, snakeskin and Cave's blue jean paper over boards. Enclosed in vintage feed sack material and lasped with three vintage buttons. Reviewing the possibilities of the life of the snake found flattened in the driveway - from Medusa's head to a garter-snake-in-the-grass.
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Oblivion Lost A six paneled book with drawings of exposed tree roots and animal skulls found beside the road near Morrison's house in Virginia. A snapping turtle, a raccoon, and owl lore, etc. fill the front of the panels and the back of the panels have the description of the finds and the family finders. Printed with a gocco printer on oriental paper and gone back into with Pigma Microi pens and watercolors (beavers' teeth). Piano wires support the skulls and balsa strips support the wires. Covers are an African cloth over board held together with hand dyed rayon seam binding. Held by a bone clasp. |
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Fibbonaci Crow's 10.5 x 3.25". On the proliferation of birds in a New Jersey town. "Once there were no crows in Leonia. Then there was one, another, then a third, and increasing like a Fibonacci sequence, they now cover the trees." The mathematical sequence, recognized by Fibonnaci, explains the patterns of sunflower seeds and the chambered nautilus. Single spread, with winglike pop-out, displays the sequence pictorially through the increase of birds per folded section of paper. (Hint for the mathematically uninclined: add the two previous groupings to arrive at the next. That is: 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, etc.) Gocco printed on Fabriano Tiziano. Some crows are pasted to foam and glued down so they rise slightly away from the page, adding visual interest. Bound in green sharkskin paper over boards. |
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| And, then ... These books are ones with odd shaped pages which are laminated. | |
Dead Kites 7.25" x 7.75 x .25" Uses Garamond. Text and drawings printed on tissue paper with a Gocco printer. Laminated to tissue paper hands from a Mexican political banner. 18 laminated kite pages held together with one ring from which hangs crewel thread simulating a kite's tail. Housed in white pictorial cloth bag with button closure. "The little kites, flown from those flat roofs in Mexico City, hang tangled for months from the wires."
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What's He Got Up His Sleeve? Arms are gocco printed, sewn, cut, found. Arms in felt, fabrics, metals, papers, and plastic laminates. In box. Vintage cuffs form the covers of this book which is filled with baby arms, Popeye's muscled arms, skeleton arms and more in all sizes and colors. Morrison's wandering mind takes up the question of "What's He Got Up His Sleeve?" then proceeds to give several possibilities.
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Lois Morrison Out of Print Titles: |
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Page last update: 05.03.08
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