Calligraphy & more — the studio of Beth Lee, Bozeman, MT
I’m honored to have two of my books selected for inclusion in the artist book exhibit CONTENT at the The Artery in Davis, CA. If you follow this blog, you’ll have seen them here before.
Scintillate, Scintillate is an edition of 12 manuscript books. I talked about them earlier in detail here.
And Omnigatherum: A Lexiphanic Glossary for Catastrophic Times is an edition of inkjet-printed accordion pages that fold into a box. More details and photos of that edition may be found here.
My latest artist book, Omnigatherum: A Lexiphanic Glossary for Catastrophic Times, continues my slight obsession with weird and wacky words. I’ve never posted photos of my latest artist book edition, completed December 2021. It’s time!
The text is a compendium of obscure words that each have a relationship to my experience of life during the pandemic. Many of these words are the ones I used last year in this broadside, which sold during the course of my solo exhibition in Missoula.
The box lid serves as a front cover for this inkjet-printed accordion that emerges and keeps emerging, for something like six feet of length, 2 inches at a time. The enclosing box is just 2 in x 2 in x 2in. Cloth-covered boards make up the box, and the accordion fold is giclee printed on Arches Text Laid paper. A stone bead serves as the handle on the box.
There are currently three books remaining in the edition. You can purchase one here.
I realize that I’ve never shared the variable edition of 12 manuscript books that I made last fall. Here are photos of the three verses of The Water is Wide. 5 x 8 in, Bister and sumi inks on Arches Text Wove, lettering done with a no. 2 round sable brush. Book cloth over hard cover.
These books were the “comfort food” of the studio this past fall. The melody that goes with these traditional lyrics is the kind of tune that sticks in your brain, but it’s soothing.
If you’ve been reading this blog, you’ll know something about How to Be in the World: An Abecedarian Commonplace for Living. This is a portfolio of 26 sheets that each contain an illuminated letter, a verb, and a favorite quotation relating to that verb. Written and drawn all in pencil, these pages were developed over a number years. It was featured in Letter Arts Review earlier this year, and I also made a clamshell box to hold the stack of original sheets.
As of the end of May, these are all sold out. Thank you to everyone who purchased one!
I just finished making this clamshell box for my abecedarian pencil portfolio, “How To Be In The World”. Except that it’s about 1/16″ too shallow to fit all the pages! Simply checking the fit after I made the inner tray — the first of three components to be made — would have made all clear. But I didn’t.
So now I have a beautiful clamshell box that needs a content. And a stack of pages that still need a box. Ah, well, I had planned to make three clamshell boxes this week, to solidify what I learned in the online bookbinding class through the University of Utah. Looks like the second and third ones will be virtually identical!
It’s been that kind of day. I wrote a letter to my niece using sumi ink and a 1/2mm Brause dip pen. It looked quite nice, if I say it myself, except that I discovered a huge, wet splotch of sumi ink on the back of the letter when I began to fold it for mailing. I mailed it anyway. Sometimes you’ve just got to move on. (The scroll-point red marker on the envelope went a little better.)
On Monday, I was thrilled to receive my copy of the current issue of Letter Arts Review. It’s always a good day when the LAR arrives, but especially so this time: my ABC pencil portfolio, How to Be In The World, was featured in it — all 28 pages! If you follow this blog, you’ve read about the portfolio several times here. The final product is definitely a ship of Theseus: every single page has been redone at least once.
Although I’m understandably infatuated with those particular pages, the entire issue is an excellent one. It includes an interview with the inimitable Julie Wildman, a book project by Louise Grunewald, Anna Pinto on pastels and pochoir, and more. Get your own copy here.
(In a few weeks, I may be letting up on the exclamation points. Maybe.)
The penultimate book in this 2015 edition, Piano Accordion, is off to another book exhibit, this time in Ellensburg, Washington, at Gallery One.
Unique manuscript books is complete and available for sale. Can’t Not Look: Democracy in America is a collection of quotations from our presidents in three sections: “Civility & Comity”, “Ethics & Equality”, and “Dangers to Democracy”. Each section contains at its center a fold-out quadruple truck of our present leader’s tweets on the same subject.
This book is difficult to photograph, I’m afraid. The paper is vintage handmade John Green: “Dover Castle”. Here are a few images.
I am so pleased that I have finally finished the last of Scintillate, Scintillate, a variable edition of 12 manuscript books. I finished the first nine back in October. You can see a photo of one of the books, open, here.
Long time no post! We’ve been traveling, and I’ve been Instagramming, and … well, honestly, inspiration has been sparse on the ground. Anyway, remember this artist book I was working on? I mostly finished it shortly thereafter, but never posted any photos. I had a few binding chores left on the last couple in the edition, and I worked on that recently … which reminded me that I had never properly photographed it. Here are some images from the book.
A variable edition of 12 manuscript books; 4 are still available. The books are small at 1-5/8 in x 3 in x 1/2 in, and lettered in gouache with a metal pen.
