Artists' Books

In Between

In Between

Frida Baranek
Special Collections, Rhode Island School of Design
Fleet Library, Rhode Island School of Design

Description

1 box, 16 portfolios. Title from title page of text booklet. Housed in a cloth-covered drop-spine portfolio box (30 x 24 x 5 cm) with paper label on spine Portfolio contains a text booklet (42 pages) plus 16 specimens of handmade paper in individual white paper folders with letterpress identifying each artist. Text booklet contains artists' statements and biographical information. Contents: Amalia Avilés-Lugo -- Anna Hendrick Karpatkin Benjamin -- Hannah O'Hare Bennett -- Jenna Bonistalli -- Elena Bordacconi -- Lesa Hepburn -- Julie L. Johnson -- Danae Lagoy -- Tom Leech -- Stephanie Lerma -- Roberto Mannino -- Jill Odegaard -- Sariah Park -- Claire Reynes -- Jamie Monosson Scherzer -- Kazumi Seki Hand Papermaking's lucky thirteenth themed portfolio of handmade paper was by design meant to inspire broad interpretation. The hope was that the final papers in the portfolio would be thought-provoking and visually compelling art works that formally or conceptually suggested the liminal, the undefined, the unextreme, the marginal, the middling. In the end, our challenge attracted a diverse group of 16 artists from Europe, Japan, New Zealand, and all corners of the United States whose collective 16 paper works, chosen by curator Frida Baranek, are an intriguing record of the creative spirit of these decidedly "in between" times. To represent the "in between" in paper, some artists worked with layers, building meaningful works of art with unusual juxtapositions and surprising manipulations between multiple couches or applications of pulp. Other artists embedded various fibers or objects, such as delicate weavings of thread, directly and impractically into the paper. Still others made abstract works that challenged the very notion of what paper is. On the whole, the papers in In Between are as strangely beautiful as they are beautifully strange.