Codex IX International Book Fair & Symposium
Ath’wart Press will be at CODEX book fair at TABLE #155. Come visit and see my latest artist books as well as collaborative works with poet/artist judi goldberg under the imprimatur of Off Press.
Come for crumples & tea with conversations!
10 10th Street Oakland, CA 94607
For more information about Codex: www.codexfoundation.org
I will be showing an installation in the
at the Sebastopol Center For the Arts
I hope to see you there at the reception this coming
Sebastopol Center For The Arts
282 High Street
Sebastopol, CA 95472
Gallery Hours: Thurs - Sunday 10 - 4pm
CODEX VIII International Book Fair: April 10th through 13th at the Craneway Pavilion in Richmond
REMINDER:
I will be exhibiting artist books
under the imprimatur of
ath’wart press at TABLE 26.
What you might like to know about ath’wart press here and more at https://www.brookeholve.com/athwart-press:
ath’wart and “resistance”
—what role it plays in my art practice
—when I feel it, how I respond
—Do I react to or hold the feeling?
—Do I have other words to describe this experience? ie. willfulness, frustration, steadfastness, others?
Recently I read Roni Horn’s latest book, Island Zombie, Iceland Writings. She devoted an entire chapter to “weather reports”. We have our own internal weather reports, which for me the “resistance” front often shows up and passes through. I found her words insightful: ”The weather’s like that. If you don’t fight it, you become one with it and vanish. You cease to exist if you don’t show resistance and cunning. Some people are said to have an eye for the weather but that goes hand in hand with having an eye for life in general. They’re doubtless better hunters and fishermen and notice more things in nature.”
Resistance shapes. And it was an act of resistance that introduced me to art.
An ath'wart story:
I did not set out to be an artist and it took me awhile to proclaim that I was. My father planted the seed although at the time I did not realize it and he never did. Driving by an abstract sculpture one day he exclaimed “Why would anyone make something like that!” Internally I remember questioning “Why would anyone make something like that?”
Little did I know at the time, that turning a statement into a question was an act of transgression and the beginning of a life as an artist. Questioning opened a way.
The Or Not - An example of an art project that would not have happened if I had not encountered the “resistance” front. Ath’wart honors the role of mistakes and the opportunities offered while working. Artist Books (extracted from The Way Things Are catalogs) will be on display at Codex VIII, Table 26.
Another ath’wart story:
Eric Johnson, founding and former director of North Bay Letterpress Arts, had an exchange with his #2 son, Dino recently. His son occasionally sends him nonsense compositions. He recently sent a two-liner picking up on the oddness of one of my favorite words.
I once fought athwart
I lost
To this Eric responded:
We had a funny moment in the shop four years ago when Brooke Holve encountered a word in a text she was studying and called out to those of us in the room: “guys, what does ATH-wart mean? We tactfully explained that it was pronounced with accent on the other syllable and that it meant across the main direction etc etc. She had the reaction that it was very funny how wrong she had been and how ignorant. From that day on, she invented ATH-wart Press…it’s all explained on that web page.
To which Dino replied:
Ha! She athwarted athwart! They said it couldn’t be done.
Just for that, a bonus, no charge, dedicated to Holve Athwart:
Greed peels sweet needle skin
Up yup hip dippy rub grape space in ripped up crumb humps?
Like you said
*masks required, safe distancing encouraged
EXHIBITION SCHEDULE
The shop will be open on Sundays during the duration of the exhibit at set times below:
Oct 24th 11 - 1, Oct 31st 2 - 5, Nov 7th 11 - 3, Nov 14th 11 - 3, Nov 21st 11 - 3, Nov 28th 1 - 5
This installation is part of a larger movement of artists, “Art On The Edge Of The Abyss” a multimedia, multi-venue, cross-border art intervention that will investigate extractive industry in all of its forms (from mining and drilling to the reckless exploitation of water, soil, trees, marine life, and other natural resources) instigated by Peter Koch (Codex) and Edwin Dobb. The project will expose and interrogate extraction’s negative social and environmental consequences, from the damage done to people, especially indigenous and disenfranchised communities, to ravaged landscapes and poisoned water to climate change and its many troubling implications.
Featured here will be the installation & performance*
.NO TITLE
by judi goldberg AND Brooke Holve
A collaboration and conversation
between two artists
with different approaches and aesthetic
working with what is.
* To be held on Sunday, November 7 at 1:30pm
Source Material and Evidence of Process
features an installation by two artists, Brooke Holve and Catherine Richardson.
The exhibit opens at the Seager Gray Gallery in MIll Valley on July 1 and will be on view till the end of July. The opening reception is on July 10th with a conversation by the artists at 3:00 followed by a reception from 4 - 6.
I have been collaborating with Catherine Richardson on this topic of extraction for over two years. The installation will look at the global impact of our much coveted cell phones on the environment. Digging deep into the components of a cell phone, the artists reveal connections between its “smartness,” the mining industries and humans’ relationship with the earth.
For more descriptive information on the installation, click “Press Release” below.
A PREVIEW: Plexiglass & Mixed Media, Shelves of Objects that reflect the artists’ processes, Projections and Artist Book
This installation is part of a larger movement of artists, “Art On The Edge Of The Abyss” a multimedia, multi-venue, cross-border art intervention that will investigate extractive industry in all of its forms (from mining and drilling to the reckless exploitation of water, soil, trees, marine life, and other natural resources). The project will expose and interrogate extraction’s negative social and environmental consequences, from the damage done to people, especially indigenous and disenfranchised communities, to ravaged landscapes and poisoned water to climate change and its many troubling implications
.Below are pics of the catalog/exhibition guide, published by the codexfoundation.org compiled by Sam Pelts.
Materiality Re_Mined pgs 110 - 113 in the catalog. A digital “sketch” of our mobile phone project that seeks to expose the trail of minerals and elements mined to build the devices we depend on.
It’s already been two months since my return from Cill Rialaig, the artist retreat on the Iveragh Peninsula of County Kerry Ireland.
I went with artist, Catherine Richardson, to collaborate on Materiality, Re_Mined, a project we initiated in response to the call for action proposed in Extraction: Art on the Edge of the Abyss. The event slated for 2021, envisions worldwide participation and simultaneous showing of artists from around the world concerned about how “We are recklessly modifying every feature of the planet surfaces.”
We mostly worked independently guided by our own inspirations and impressions of the place except when we took field trips to mines and quarries in the area.
In those two months since my return, I have been working with some of the materials of Cill Rialaig that I discovered—as it was an unfamiliar source place with its own unique aura seeped in a difficult history with remains and remnants of a time.
My hope was to extract from what was there. What were those materials of this place that spoke to me?
With a predilection toward stones and wind worn landscapes, I was at home surrounded by stones & rocks—the cottages, boundary walls, ruins, standing stones. A spectacularly beautiful place with memories in these stones—trace fossils that marked a past.
If the stones could talk, what would they say?
No words but textures to touch and feel. In preparation for this residency, I extracted pages from mining books. Here I found a place to use them by backing them with wheat paste and using the rock shapes from the wall to mold them. The stone wall shaped the pages and held the art.
Trying to keep warm in a cold place:
At Cill Rialaig, a prefamine village with 19th century ambiance, I was far from the world I knew without the distractions of the 21st century—internet, iPhone, daily news.
Instead I was preoccupied with keeping warm. No central heating, no insulation and cold stone walls & a slate ceiling. The turf eater (an Irish term for the wood stove) became my focus as it consumed the peat, the fuel used here. Discovering that peat was so fast burning, I found that the stove required vigilant attending to ensure uninterrupted warmth.
I went through many bags of peat and accumulated many pails of ash. So it became a material to experiment with in its various forms of brick, charcoal, ash and ink.
My work, cuts make you. will be on view in this exhibition.
I continue to work at this press on Thursdays, making artist books and broadsides under the
imprint of ath’wart press. Each year I reflect on how fortunate I am to have discovered this
place and the printers who work here. Come by on Sunday and help us celebrate all that is offered!
Holiday Open House
Free! Donations encouraged.
North Bay Letterpress Arts
925d Gravenstein Hwy SO
Sebastopol, CA 95472
Join us at the print shop for our annual open house! Festivities include: handmade
books and cards, printed artwork, food & drink, delightful conversations, shop tours,
and printing demos. See you there!
Brooke reports back from her recent travels to Iceland and the workshop she taught, BOOK ICELAND. Presentation at North Bay Letter Press Arts (NBLA), on Sunday, August 5th from 2pm to 3:30pm NBLA is located in Sebastopol at 925d Gravenstein Hwy South. www.northbayletterpressarts.org
Ready to leave, now that I know that my boxes of supplies have arrived safely. I am returning to Iceland this week to teach the workshop, BOOK ICELAND at Gullkistan Center for Creativity in Laugarvatn. This will be my fourth trip to Iceland and my third visit to Gullkistan. I am excited to put my ideas in this form for others.
BOOK ICELAND workshop materials have arrived.
More about BOOK ICELAND:
It's a rare visitor who is not touched by Iceland's natural energies and diverse landscape. A wild island of the north with massive glaciers exposed to wind and ocean currents, is located on two tectonic plates with a fault line running at an oblique angle from its north to southwest. Energies of wind, fire and water below and above its surface shape the landscape, leaving unique textures and colors not seen elsewhere on this earth: glacier ice fields and lagoons, rumbling volcanoes, waterfalls, vast lava fields--moss covered and raw, contorted basalt walls, geysers, thermal pools, deep gorges and fjords.
This land of extremes has also shaped its people and language. Steeped in a history of isolation and hardship, the Vikings who first settled this island in the late ninth century, recounted their stories in folktales, poems, oral histories and song. Two centuries later, those stories were captured in writing--leaving handwritten manuscripts that are treasured and valued today.
The Icelanders' love for both their land and the book has inspired this workshop. We'll explore Iceland's varied landscape; we will look at how the natural processes have shaped it and explore ways to express those energies through artistic experimentation. We will develop content for two books (from our field studies) and learn two book structures (drum leaf & coptic binding) to contain it.
