Visual Books ~ New York
(Scott McCarney)

State of the Union/ LIVE, EVIL, VILE.
By Scott McCarney
Rochester, New York: Visual Books, 2006. Edition of 100.

8 x 8", 32 pages. Digital printing. Stab binding with duct tape and red linen thread. Text from the Internet Anagram Server.

Scott McCarney: "The source of images for State of the Union was the 1992 television broadcast of George W. Bush's State of the Union address. My boyfriend had recently given me a small point-and-shoot digital camera for my birthday. I was curious what a digital image from television would look like. I did not have this book in mind at the time, and I set up my camera on a tripod and turned down the volume on the TV. The resulting images of Bush emphasized the odd tics and expressions that had become a trademark of this president. In the forthcoming political cartoons, these expressions have mirrored the massacre of language which he is known for world-wide. The live tag in the frame of the television screen transformed into evil and then into vile. On the internet, and the resulting anagrams for The State of the Union became a text-crawl which separated Bush's expressive eyes from that of his mouth. This binding made with plastic sheeting and duct tape is suggestive of the Department of Homeland Security use of readiness for chemical and biological terrorist attacks."
$35

C(a[e{I}o]u)P: Autobiography #5
By Scott McCarney
Rochester, New York: Visual Studies Workshop, 2005.
Edition of 150.

5.5 x 8"; 48 pages. Digital printing. Dos-à-dos binding.

Scott McCarney: "Collections are a reflection of the collector and the act of collecting as much as the objects collected. As I get older, the relationship between collecting and discarding parallels that of remembering and forgetting: I remember less and accumulate more....

"When my mother died, I was designated the family archivist and salvaged the remnants of my parent's estate. The bulk of family photographs, historical records and sentimental objects were things I had lived with and taken for granted for most of my life. Unpacking this material invoked many family memories. Seeing it in the same place and at the same time illuminated my own propensity for collecting and ordering. Could it be genetic? ...

"C(a[e{I}o]u)P: Autobiography #5 combines my parents' small collections with my own, broadening the definition of a self-portrait through generational/genealogical slices. Tea cups my mother displayed in exacting order on a cherry wood hutch her father had crafted compliment souvenir caps from my travels. Videotapes my father recorded over and over and labeled accordingly are framed by pages from my 'to-do' lists.

"The most poignant find in my parent's effects were two small boxes labeled 'Scott's Art' and 'Scott's Correspondence.' Stored within were postcards, show announcements and small books I sent to them over the past twenty-five years. The post cards, a conventional gesture to let my parents know they were in my thoughts, transcend the nominal time and expense of their original posting. The act of collecting them was a gentle acknowledgement of relationship through memory and reflection, as well as a certain comfort found in order."
$50 Standard

C(a[{I}o]u)P: Autobiography #5
By Rochester, New York: Visual Studies Workshop, 2005. Deluxe Edition of 30.

7 x 12" velvet drawstring bag containing: C(a[e{I}o]u)P: Autobiography #5; photograph of teacup collection; facsimiles of four recipe cards; copy of Things to Do: Autobiography #1.

Autobiography #5: 5.5 x 8"; 48 pages; digital printing; dos-à-dos binding. Teacup Collection photograph: 5.25 x 4.1" color print. Recipe cards: 2.6 x 4.25" color facsimile, double-sided. Autobiography #1: 5.5 x 6.5"; 46 pages; photocopied onto the backs of recycled proof sheets; stab/stapled binding.

Scott McCarney, colophon, Autobiography #5: "I chose the dos-à-dos form for this book which traditionally binds the two texts together with a common back cover. The two booklets are bound in the representation of wood and yarn, materials which my father and mother chose to express themselves creatively — the book itself being my own mode for obsessive expression (and collection)."

Scott McCarney, colophon, Autobiography #1: "The first book in a series of small edition autobiographies produced from the ephemeral collections of my obsessive nature. Things to Do is a facsimile of the monthly checklists of projects and correspondence I tried to keep up with from March 1994 through February 1997."
$250 deluxe

Saints & Sinners: Gay Pride & Straight Shame
By Scott McCarney
Rochester, New York: Visual Books, 2005. Edition of 10.

5.5 x 8.5"; 8 pages. Ink jet fold book. Images downloaded from the internet. Printed ink jet on 50 lb. acid-free Red River Paper Premium Matte with archival links.

Scott McCarney: "A comment on the intolerance and hypocrisy of
fundamentalist protesters at Rochester New York's 2005 Gay Pride parade. Images of the parade, files downloaded from the internet and a biblical text are fused using 'invert' and 'difference' blending modes in Photoshop."
$450

Memory Loss
By Scott McCarney
Rochester, New York: Visual Studies Workshop, 1988. Edition of 500.

2.5 x 22"; 40 pages. Four-color offset printed. A single sheet. Combination venetian blind/foldbook. Bound with cord strung through die-cut holes, which can be used to create different angles of viewing. The book cannot, however, be laid completely flat. Black embossed board covers with title blind-stamped on each.

A powerful work that represents in physical, verbal, and visual ways the complexity of brain trauma, Memory Loss was inspired by a traumatic brain injury suffered by the artist's brother in 1986. The accordion structure combines fractured images and texts drawn from medical literature about head injury with personal photographs and correspondence. The book can be seen from many angles: as a static piece of sculpture from a "clinical" distance, or close at hand where manipulating the pages reveals personal struggles.

Scott McCarney, The Biography of a Book: "Memory Loss came into existence as a book at the Visual Studies Workshop Press three years after it was conceived and five years after the event that inspired it. It uses elements of biography and autobiography to create an 'experiential autobiography' that exists only in the context of the book."
$150