Sara Parkel
Hybrid Land
Printing, design and binding by Sara Parkel, Filter Press
Poems by Joel Brouwer and Shin Yu Pai
Letterpress: collagraph blocks (4), woodcuts (18), pressure printing, photopolymer and wood type.
Paper: printed on Neenah Papers Environment Quest White, 100% post consumer fiber.
Cover: 1/8” natural bamboo with silk screen title.
Ethiopian-style link stitch binding.
In edition of 40 with 5 artist proofs.
9 x 5.25” (26 x 5.25” open at largest spread)
Printed in Gordo, Alabama
2011
About the book:
Hybrid Land is a limited edition artist book that revolves around ecological themes, bringing into question our culture’s manipulation of crops and our interaction with the environment. The book is letterpress printed, utilizing the effects of transparent inks through a collage-like layering of woodcuts, collagraph blocks, and pressure printing techniques. Dried corn and soybean leaves act as the first printed layer throughout the book, two main crops genetically modified in the United States. With vibrant colors and plant-based imagery reflecting the beauty in nature, the interwoven text by poets Joel Brouwer and Shin Yu Pai expresses the darker implications crop modification has in our lives. Brouwer’s text includes excerpts from Thoreau’s ‘Bean Field’ chapter in Walden, is printed on a series of fold-out pages. With reference to classical mythology and TV reality, this text is about the separation between nature and man, a loss of cultural knowledge and history. Pai’s text is interwoven throughout the book, acting as the final collage layer on top of plant imagery. Drawing a palpable connection between food and memory, Pai’s text asks us to recall food from the market and from our memories.
All materials used in this book are recycled or come from rapidly renewable resources. The binding is non-adhesive.
325
Sliver of Salt
Sliver of Salt Is a bi-lingual letterpress printed edition with poems by Slovenian author, Aleš Debeljak. Translation by Andrew Zawacki and the author.
Designed and printed by Sara Parkel of Filter Press
Size: 4 5/8" x 8 1/4"
2007
Pamphlet-stitch, tri-fold accordion structure. Housed in a hand-sewn, natural linen bag with drawstring closure and letterpress label. Covers soaked in salt water.
About the book:
The book revolves around three poems: opening with Hymn to the Favorite City, a melancholic poem thick with memory, an anchoring or beginning point. Next is the moment of transformation with Metamorphosis of Pain, which oscillates between that of consciousness and inevitability. Angels, Close Relatives completes the triad, with a sense of lapsed time and lightness in being.
Printed drawings of a sinking boat, birds in flight, and a jacket hovering off the pages edge echo the lucid qualities of the text while a hand drawn river that transforms into air, connects the sections from beginning to end.
It is the quality of Debeljak’s writing, the bending of words that give magical qualities to the ordinary, transforming and blending the real with the magical, encompassing the general with the self-reflective.
The book can be viewed as a codex style, page by page, or extended into the triptych/accordion form as three interacting sections. The book is intended to be viewed differently depending on the viewer. One can solely focus on the text, the illustrations, or a combination of the two like a multi-section exquisite corpse.
70
http://www.thefilterpress.com/