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Visual Books ~
New York |
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Autobiographies & biographical bookworks by McCarney |
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State of the Union/ LIVE, EVIL, VILE. 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." |
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Saints & Sinners: Gay Pride & Straight Shame 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
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Often McCarney bases his books on his family relationships, family members, or his past experiences and history. Scott McCarney: "Any book I make could arguably be considered an autobiography, but the books in this group are consciously constructed as biographical studies worked out in a visual mode." |
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COLLECTED BIOGRAPHIES Four books (Autobiography #1 THINGS TO DO, Autobiography #2 REJECTIONS SLIPS, Autobiography #3 PICTURES OF ME WITH FAMOUS AND IMPORTANT PEOPLE, and Autobiography #4 HOMEMADE MAPS) contained in 6.5 x 9 x 1" archival cardboard wraparound case with cotton ties. Archival plastic bag attached to interior base. Opening at top of bag to extract books. Each book was designed with a format unique to its content. Each printed with a different machine or process. Scott McCarney: "These four autobiographies were conceived between 1997 and 1999 after coming across a series of file folders while cleaning up my studio. I have always considered myself an ardent collector, but finding these files questioned the difference between collecting and hoarding. I admit (now) it is difficult for me to throw things away, especially remnants of my own life which, over time, become physical relics of fading memories. "At the time of this discovery I had been working on a long-term project influenced by and incorporating encyclopedias and dictionaries, so it was logical to approach this personal information as a latter day Denis Diderot or Samuel Johnson might have done. There was a wealth of data in these collections that could benefit from the organization and formalization that the book form offers. "THINGS TO DO (Autobiography #1) ... is a scaled-down reproduction of monthly checklists of projects and correspondence I tried to keep up with from March 1994 through February 1997. It [was] photocopied onto the backs of recycled laser proof sheets saved from extraneous jobs ... The stab/stapled binding was invented for the edition. "REJECTION SLIPS(Autobiography #2) was meant to be a straight forward facsimile of the rejection letters I'd received over the past twenty years. But I got bored, started highlighting words that reoccurred from letter to letter and manipulated the pages in ways made possible only by the distance of time. I like the fact that the letters look small when held in your hand, adding perspective to time. "PICTURES OF ME WITH FAMOUS AND IMPORTANT PEOPLE (Autobiography #3) consists of pictures gleaned from over 100 photographs that were taken of me by other people, from baby pics to digital snaps. At first I was going to publish all of them in chronological order which would have been conceptually elegant but ultimately boring (and, to me, kind of creepy). The more I looked at this collection, I began to think about the generic relationship of photographs to memory and collecting. I tried to distance myself and see them as raw information, like entries in a dictionary or articles in an encyclopedia. ... It utilize[d] a 16-page single sheet format I've taught to students but never used in my own work. It was printed on one side of Mohawk Letterpress paper using an Epson Photo-Ex ink Jet printer. "HOMEMADE MAPS (Autobiography #4) is from a collection of drawings that people made for me to get from one place to another. I love 'functional' drawings that are unself-consciously drawn and quite beautiful when formally viewed as drawing. These particular drawings were made by friends and remind me of the time and place we were together. The book [was] a large photocopy cut and folded into a 'snake' format, ..." |
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Hands of Time Box: 6.5 x 8.5 x 1.75" hinged with paper title on lid. Book: 5.5 x 4.5"; 28 Scott McCarney: "Hands of Time documents a version of a piece that has been installed/performed privately in my garden in Rochester NY for the past eight years. It started as a tribute to my father, who died at his home in Virginia from lung cancer in 2001. When told he had three weeks to six months to live, he chose to move from hospital to hospice care at home. That was Friday. We had a nice weekend together before he passed away the following Tuesday, much to the surprise of his doctor. Being with him those last few days, I understood his will to die was as strong as his will to live had been. "In the course of cleaning up the medical supplies, the hospice nurse gave me a box of latex surgical gloves that I had opened but not used. She knew I was an artist, and I believe she wanted to see them in my art. "My father enjoyed my garden very much when he visited, spending time sitting and contemplating, moving a lawn chair around to enjoy different views. He would give me leather gardening gloves every year - the nice, soft kid-skin variety that are like a second skin. "I started filing the latex gloves with sand in the summer of 2001, tying the opening in a knot, the way one does after inflating a balloon. I placed them in areas throughout the garden. Over the course of a season, the gloves burst due to the abrasive sand combined with effects of the sun and rain, returning the sand to the earth. "The opportunity to perform this tribute in a public space was offered by Le Petit Versailles, a Green Thumb garden created in 1996 by community neighbors ... I spent a lovely spring morning in the garden filling gloves with dirt gathered on site, a mix of seeds I saved from plants in my Rochester garden, plus a bonus plastic barnyard animal. When the latex disintegrated, a part of my garden would become part of le Petit Versailles." The pamphlet in the ensemble of items describes the space and process of the project. It includes a vertical panorama of Le Petit Versailles garden situated between two buildings in New York City. |
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A Selection of Cards 5.75 x 8.75"; 34 pages. Blue and gray illustrated paper boards with red-cloth spine. Title label on front board in the from of McCarney's mother's recipe cards and reads "From the Kitchen of Lela McCarney." Scott McCarney, colophon: "The cards represented in this book were culled from a collection my mother assembled over a lifetime of interest in cooking and health. The original cards, housed in a wooden box crafted by my father, may be seen as an unintentional Fluxus project containing hundreds of written instructions for potential performance events. The stains, attributes, and annotations are visual cues akin to Proust's notion of 'involuntary memory' as evoked by the taste of his madeleine. This selection, though ordered much like a menu, is meant to be consumed as a visual rather than a culinary feast." If you've been lucky, these pages will spark memories of grandmothers and mothers cooking, measuring, mixing, pouring over recipes. |
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C(a[e{I}o]u)P: Autobiography #5 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." |
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C(a[{I}o]u)P: Autobiography #5 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." |
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Memory Loss 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." |
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Page last update: 01.26.10
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