Theodora Press ~ Illinois
(Teresa Pankratz)

She'd had no premonitions...
By Teresa Pankratz
Chicago, Illinois: Theodora Press, 2007. Edition of 6.

13 x 11"; 2 pages. Half bound with streaked red bookcloth. Intaglio-printed title and illustration inset in top board. Book opens just past 90°, allowing inventive pop-up and rich intaglio images to present a dreamscape in diorama form. Intaglio prints are zinc plates that underwent several layers of tonal aquatints after the initial line work was etched in. Text in script which Pankratz wrote into her original drawing (and which, when transferred to be etched into the zinc plate, had to be reproduced backwards in order to print in the right order to be read; this ends up being a process of drawing the letters as individual line relationships rather than writing the words.).

Teresa Pankratz: "She'd had no premonitions… is part of a new body of work with an in-progress title of The Dream House Collection. These pieces revolve around the fictionalized autobiographical tale (the house Pankratz grew up in did burn down in 2005) of the transformations that take place in the lives of three grown siblings when the house they grew up in burns to the ground. Other titles in the collection will be available as they are produced."

“She’d had no premonition…” was conceived after receiving the news that my childhood home had burnt to the ground. Etched into the cloud of smoke billowing from the small town’s aerial map, these dream texts chronicle my nocturnal visits to the site. Unable to physically return home for several weeks, it seems that, as the text etched into the foreground relates: “To this house, she could travel in her sleep.”
$1,100

Hey Cookie
By Teresa Pankratz
Chicago, Illinois: Theodora Press, 2006. Edition of 60.

4 x 3.25" closed, extends to 9.75"; 3 leaves. Printed by laser jet on acid free cover weight Royal Fiber. Text printed in Brush Script M7. Housed in 3.875 x 3.5 envelope with colophon tipped on.

Teresa Pankratz: "This paper doll string of cookies was created in response to the 9/11 terrorist attacks. An earlier edition was included in [my] holiday greetings at the end of the year 2000."

Text printed across pages shaped like a gingerbread man whose head is progressively chomped until only a smile remains: "Life is very unpredictable / so perhaps the best solution / is to keep smiling to the end."
$15

Flying
By Teresa Pankratz
Chicago, Illinois: Theodora Press, 2005. Edition of 160.

Wing-shaped outer pages (4 x 5.25" closed, opens to 10.5") holds a miniature accordion book with endpapers attached to underside of wings. Etched cover is handprinted on Stonehenge. Miniature book (2 x 1.375") has 8 pages printed by laser jet in 14 point Brush Script on Hagakure.

Colophon: "This wing shaped book was conceived and created at the close of a year of great change and chance happenings." The text is a simple affirmation to the liberating power of "shedding / lightening / (not) seeing
/ (but) believing."
$30

The List, Expanded
A Fraction of What One Could Order For Home, Self and Garden from Sears, Roebuck and Co. Spring/Summer 1956
By Teresa Pankratz
Chicago, Illinois: Theodora Press, 2004. Edition of 10.

7.625 x 2.25” closed; 7.5 x 14" extended.; 10 pages. Double-sided-house shaped accordion. Images printed by thermography silkscreen. Text printed letterpress in 10 point Stone Sans. Housed in illustrated paper house-shaped stiff wrapper with bone & ribbon closure.

Teresa Pankratz: 'The List, Expanded' is a list of a mere fraction of the thousands of articles available for purchase from the Sears and Roebuck Catalog in 1956, the year of the artist’s birth. (The original list appears as several of the daily entries of 'The Wish to Begin: A Journal', a one-of-a-kind artist’s journal using the visual resource of this same catalog.) Silkscreen printed in brown ink on Sakamoto lightweight to recall the catalog’s original yellowed pages, collaged items encroach upon the letterpress printed lists. Each of the silkscreened cases includes a unique collaged image cut directly from the original catalog."
$125

Tulips: A Valentine
By Teresa Pankratz
Chicago, Illinois: Theodora Press, 2004. Edition of 5.

2.5 x 2.5 x 2.5"; 4 pages. Text in 12 point Apple Chancery and printed on Karakusa paper. Inner tulip liner papers of folded Pink Mulberry and Hagakura. Tulip linocuts on the inside of the box printed on Pink Mulberry. Housed in drop-sided cloth covered box with ribbon closures.

Teresa Pankratz: "Multiple layers of folded Japanese paper separate as this drop-sided box is opened and the innermost four pages becomes fully visible. revealing a text that begins: 'That time you were away/I bought tulips in January./For a whole day/they would not drink, /their heads/bowed/almost to the table/in sorrow…' The narrative of the progressive opening of these winter flowering buds is a love poem that unfolds upon the book’s innermost pages."
$275

Luck
By Teresa Pankratz
Chicago, Illinois: Theodora Press, 1995. Edition of 20.

4.625 x 2.875"; 12 pages. Laser jet on Speckle Tone True White Text. Transparencies are zeroxes of pen and ink drawings. Text is set in 9 point Palatino. Bound in black book cloth with white ribbon closure.

A wedding ring, missing for 20 years and presumed gone, is unearthed in the garden. Pages which alternate between transparencies and cut-outs play out this manifestation of Luck.
$115

Fear of Spiders
By Teresa Pankratz
Chicago: Theodora Press, 1989. Edition of 10.

12 x 10" closed, 16' 8" fully extended (with covers); 18 pages. Accordion structure. Text letterpress printed in 18 point Caslon on Arches Cover. Ten aquatints printed on lightweight Sakamoto. Housed in black clamshell box (13.5 x 11.25 x 1.5") with decorative spider etching used for pastedowns. Interior and edges of clamshell box printed on Sakamoto lightweight paper.

The aquatints, close-ups for the most part, suggest the immediacy of arachnophobia. The sharpness of focus both pinpoints the visceral fear and neutralizes it. Childhood terror recalled from the safety of adulthood? Art diffusing experience?

Teresa Pankratz: "In a series of ten aquatints and accompanying text, this 'scary bedtime story' examines the titillating qualities of obsessive nighttime fears. Through the visual device of fluidly changing points of view, the reader moves through the darkened bedroom, alternately on the spider’s hairy legs and from behind the child’s fear-crazed eyes. As nocturnal imagination takes over, the text relates that: 'her fear and frenzy became her pleasure.' The child finds herself “becoming” that which she fears most — and is unable to return to an untroubled sleep."
$900

Bird Man
By Teresa Pankratz
1988. Edition of 10.

5 x 5.5";12 pages. Accordion-style structure. Bound in dark blue cloth over boards with marbled end papers. Inset panels of etchings with text . Mounted on blue Kuzuryu paper. Signed by the artist.

Five drawings with accompanying text.
$125

    This man is a bird man.
           He began to fly at six
                  practicing the twist
                             up in his room.