karen joyce
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For the love of books

23/5/2012

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Went to see the exhibition For the love of Books at Huyton Library and Gallery yesterday.  It's a show tied in with the bicentenary of Edward Lear, plus loans from MMU Special Collections and works by current book artists.

The draw for me was the contemporary work.  I went primarily because Elizabeth Willow, the resident book artist at Hot Bed Press, had pieces there, none of which I had seen before.  Elizabeth's work has a recognizable flavour - there's a faded-out fragility to the style, but underneath that it feels strong, not frail.  It seems to me when I examine her bookworks that I step into a completely realised and slightly off-balance world of which I had no inkling and of which I would not otherwise be aware.  I rather like that.

Julie Dodd had a display of her fantastic treetrunk slices - a rather lovely cycling of tree into paper (magazines, books) and back into tree again.  The Hot Bed Press connection was here too, as I first saw Julie's work at a talk she gave, with Michelle Rowley, at the workshop.

I would have liked a closer look at Liz Carter's books - little creations, each with their own fabric case, that surely need handling and a little bit of personal space.  Actually, the same was true in a different way of Mette-Sophie Ambeck's "Steam Salt Milk" - it is a pale thing of beauty, and its intricately cut pages should definitely be studied.  And in a different way again of Jane Kennelly's "Feral Angel", where I couldn't quite finish reading the story.  However, it does no harm to be left wanting a little bit more than you can actually have.  A very enjoyable exhibition, in a beautifully light space, and I had the room completely to myself.  

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    Hi there

    I make prints and book arts, though nowhere near as often as I'd like - no good reason, just an inability to get on with things.  I occasionally go on about landscape (with which I am mildly obsessed) and various of its elements, and I like to pass comment on exhibitions I visit.

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