|
Eels
Poem by Richard Schweid
Images by Victòria Rabal
Barcelona, Spain: 2009, Rabal / Schweid.
Edition of 25.
14 x 7"; 10 sheets. Cason typeface. Silkscreen on handmade paper. Laid in a pulp painted paper wrapper with net band closure. Catalan translation by Maria Rossich. Spanish translation by Olivia de Miguel. Signed by the poet and artist.
Prospectus: "Soft cover, handmade paper, and pulp painting that evokes the scales of a fish or a fisherman's net. To close the book, a screen ribbon has been designed with a title page inside and the author's [names on the back side]. The paper is handmade from cotton and flax in the Paper Mill Museum of Capellades, Barcelona. The book is not bound, the pages are folded in four parts and unfold in an accordion. Fiber pages with the poem in watermark [that is, appearing faintly, like a watermark] alternate with four pages of printed silkscreen images and pulp painting. The book's last page has the entire poem printed in the original English with translations into Catalan and Castilian."
"Eels is a poem that can be read in various registers: natural history, a fascination for the transformation of these animals over the course of their lives, the hunt for them, and their deaths; the eroticism of their form, movement, and touch. Lastly, the poet writes about the awareness of the inexorable passage of time and the aging and decline of our own bodies. The book's structure was chosen thinking about the unfolding of the pages, which point to the horizontalness of the animal, of the route that takes it from one part of the Atlantic to another. The poem in watermark is divided in five parts; these pages emphasize not only the technical difficulty of creating them, but also the resonance of the words, their visual sonority.
"Richard Schweid is a writer and journalist, born in Nashville, Tennessee, and living in Barcelona since 1995. He has published eight books of nonfiction in the United States, and collaborated on numerous documentaries for public television in Barcelona. He was production manager for Balseros, nominated for a Best Documentary Oscar in 2004. Among his published works, two of his books should be mentioned: Consider the Eel (2002, USA) from Da Capo Press and Eel (2008, London) in the Animal Series for Reaktion Books.
"Victòria Rabal is an artist, and director of the Paper Mill Museum of Capellades. She was born in Barcelona. She has had numerous exhibitions of her personal work in galleries in Barcelona, Madrid, Stockholm, and France, among others. She is an expert in handmade paper and was named a Master by the Catalan government in 2008 in recognition of her work. She made the artist book: Les cases del meu carrer/Die Haeuser meiner Strasse, 2006, a poem by Enric Casasses, produced by John Gerard, Germany. She has collaborated with artists including Mariaelena Roqué, Perejaume, Jaume Plensa, Miquel Barceló and others, and made special papers for the cook Ferran Adrià."
$690 |
Click image for more
|
