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
Fjordur view from the town of Seydisfjordur and views of the town below:
Off to Iceland last September for a month long artist residency at Skaftfell Center for Visual Art, located on a fjord in the small fishing village of Seydisfjordur. My fifth visit to the island as there is something about the elemental shapes and energies that continue to draw me back to its natural wonders of volcanoes, rift zones and young landscapes visibly being reshaped.
I return to feel its energies and rhythms, to experience its vastness and to open me to possibilities and conversations with and of the landscape.
Evidence of the landscape organizing itself—reshaping itself in human time. The eruption site of the Meradalir Volcano on the Reykjanes Peninsula in August of 2022.
Two years ago in December of 2020, Seydisfjordur experienced an average year’s rainfall over a period of 10 days. Major landslides destroyed 13 buildings.
Now, two years later, evidence of the landslides remain.
A water process that shapes the landscape
During my stay, I experienced a red alert storm with winds up to 60 m per second. Evidence of the power of the winds (below); a historic pier house built around 1900 by a Norwegian entrepreneur was lost, collapsing on itself.
Dissolving boundaries between art and nature; merging art and earth natural processes. Video by Brooke Holve & Eve Chartrand created during the artist residency at Skaftfell Center for Visual Art.
This e-book on our installation, Materiality Re_Mined; Deep Within the Screen of a Cell Phone has now been published and can be accessed here on blurb.com. It contains images of the installation and written contributions by Barbara Morris and Jeremy Morgan.
By Measure_1-5
I am pleased to announce my participation in the Lucid Arts Foundation Alumni Artist-in-Residency exhibition (Group 3) currently on line HERE.
Five years since my residency there. I went back to the blog archives, dated November 8, 2015 to recall the experience. Fascinating to relook and see the threads in my current work from that time.
Words I wrote: I will source possibilities for methods and materials from the place—its history, language, landscapes and natural processes.
i will work towards shaping moments and finding ways and forms that express the movements “between”—looking at rocks and stones that reflect frozen moments for inspiration in a changing landscape.
Recallng some explorations there:
Deconstructing 1970s vintage development maps of Pt. Reyes Peninsula. I wondered how this exercise might influence my constructions.
Light Studies, following and tracing the changing light, discovering forms using pen and masking tape. A way to think about transient moments.
Crumpling paper—an impulse out of the blue. A way to think about natural processes and moments when this impulse might occur.
Five years later:
Still breaking apart conventional forms and discovering alternative shapes for constructions.
Crumpling in different ways and discovering how to use these processes in my constructions and artist books.
Off to Ireland this week for an artist residency at Cill Rialaig on Kerry’s spectacular Iveragh Peninsula. This remote and rugged village of eight little stone cottages, was built out of the ruins of a 1790’s prefamine village atop a cliff face overlooking the Atlantic Ocean and Skellig Michael (a UNESCO World Heritage site). Seven of the cottages are living work spaces without TV, telephone and internet for the visiting artists. The eighth, Tigh an Comhra’ ( Gaelic for “house of conversation”) or Meeting House offers residents a place to gather and partake from a rich library. It was formerly the home of a famous inhabitant, seannachai (storyteller), Sean O’Connaill in the early part of the 20th c. I have been assigned cottage #3.
The closest village, Ballinskelligs, is three miles away. This is in a Gaeltacht, a rare Irish-speaking area, and is one of the least populated areas in Europe. With a population of less that 600, it offers few services: one general grocery store, a post office, two pubs and a few seasonal eateries, which most likely will not be open during my stay.
While there I will be working with Catherine Richardson on a collaborative project on extraction in addition to continuing my own investigations on processes of shaping. Not sure how often I will be blogging on this trip as all will be dependent on how connected I will be. Do look occasionally, however, on my instagram site holvebrooke.
A rhythm of weather effects—light blinding rays offset by gray belting hail and rain. A spectacular and felt side show as my table was located on the aisle closest to the industrial sized windows of the Craneway Center in Richmond at the Codex International Book Fair.
I enjoyed every minute of this event. Where else can one experience a gathering of book artists from all over the world? Over 200 exhibitors from more than twenty-five countries shared their quality books along with engaging conversations on their creative processes.
The international focus this year was Codex Nordica and artists from Iceland, Norway, Sweden, Denmark and Finland were represented. Special to me as I have been traveling to Iceland for artist residencies since 2012. Last summer I taught Book Iceland at the Gullkistan Center for Creativity and met two of the artists as they presented the work of Airkir (www.aikir.wordpress.com), to the class. Eight from the group came to Codex. I invited them up to the NBLA shop in Sebastopol after Codex. They accepted. So, two days after the closing, we hosted what mushroomed into a delegation of ten artists: six from Iceland, three from Norway and one from Sweden. The whole afternoon was charmed. There was a lunch next door, then a showing of each other’s books, and finally sitting down with coffee and cake to talk about how we might collaborate or at least stay in touch. It was a wonderful ending to a week of non-stop conversation and contemplation on the medium of artist books.
The San Francisco Center for the Book is currently hosting the Nordic letterpress collaboration exhibition, Posted/Unposted. The exhibition opened before Codex and will run to April 29th.
I have been invited to present a talk during this exhibition on Book Iceland, a class I taught last summer at Gullkistan Center For Creativity in Laugarvatn to artists from the United States, England, Germany and Iceland. I will report back on my experiences there in the talk I have titled, Land & Texture: Exploring Iceland For Content in Artist Books. Inspired by the natural energies which shape Iceland’s landscape, the participating artists explored materials, tools, and processes, forming the content for their artist book projects.
The talk is scheduled for Tuesday, April 2, 6–8 pm at the San Francisco Center For The Book on 375 Rhode Island Street in
San Francisco, CA sfcb.org
Mark your calendars.
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.
Gullkistan Center for Creativity and I invite you to take part in this Book Arts seminar in Iceland during the summer of 2018. Participants will explore Iceland's varied landscape; look at how the natural processes have shaped the landscape and explore ways to express those energies through artistic experimentation. Those experiments will be content for two book structures taught during the workshop - the drumleaf binding and coptic-bound cover book.
The workshop is for artists of all levels interested in exploring the book form and learning about Iceland, its book culture & history, weather, and diverse landscapes.
For specifics, check out: www.gullkistan.is/book-iceland
Since May, I've been away from my blog. Back this month to report to you some of my summer and fall activities.
I'm off to Inverness (on Pt. Reyes peninsula in CA) later this month for another artist residency, this one sponsored by the Lucid Art Foundation. And this time, intentionally close to home, for three weeks, solo without cell coverage and social media. So no reports during my time away but should have something to share upon my return. Lots of prepping, finding that I will take more than I take to residencies afar and certainly a way to complicate an experience.
When I have traveled to residencies somewhere else, I am often surprised by what I learn about my home. Three years ago in Iceland, I was awed by its raw landscape that had been shaped by volcanoes, glaciers, weather and its location in the Northern Atlantic. There I realized its connection to California--both lands edging the North American tectonic plate with Iceland on one end and California on the other. I wanted devoted time to experience my own landscape with this in mind. Inverness, though not situated on the North American plate shares the San Andreas fault which separates the No American from the Pacific. And like Iceland, its land has been shaped by invisible forces of the earth. At Inverness, I want to further explore this connection.
I am also interested in exploring place--what it holds and what I carry to it. When I applied for this residency, I wrote, "Using Inverness as a springboard, I will source possibilities for methods and materials from its history, stories and landscape. I will look at the archival remains--rocks and stones that hold the memory of the geologic forces that shaped the physical terrain. I will walk the terrain, feel its relief and make contour lines as I move through space. I will look at the scratches and markings of the rocks as well as their shapes. I also will be on alert to ways of letting nature and synchronicity enter into my process. These will be my entry points to a 'process conscious' project working with themes of the archival and ephemeral."
"Language, materials and natural energies of and from the place will inform my process. Like the rocks and stones that reflect frozen moments in a changing landscape over time, I will work towards shaping moments and find ways and forms that express the movements 'between'. "
