Some time ago I was asked to write a list of books that were important to me and that informed my work.  When I had put the list together. I realized that it told a surprising amount about what I intended in my work and what I strove for.  I thought it could make an interesting artist’s statement.

The first three books came to mind immediately:

L’Opera Gracifca Di Giorgio Morandi (Giulio Einaudi, editor; 1964) is a catalogue raisonné of Morandi etchings.  It takes me hours to page through.  Most of the etchings are still lifes of a group of bottles and jars.  The change from one work to the next is small, subtle.  Morandi’s examination of the spaces between objects is so exacting as to be devotional.  He examines these spaces and relationships page after page, again and again.  He is relentless.

Ellsworth Kelly’s Tablet: 1948—1973 (The Drawing Center; 2002) reproduces a series of boards on which Kelly pasted drawings, clippings, notes and photographs for the purpose of thinking through his ideas.  Looking through the book, I see him observing, playing with a form, turning it over in his hands, thinking.  For me, the books is an explication of process.

The Shell: Five Hundred Million Years of Inspired Design (Hugh & Marguerita Stix and R. Tucker Abbott, photographs by H Landshoff, 1972) is extraordinary for the beauty of the book itself.  The choices and variety in every aspect -- photography, layout, use of color vs. black and white -- are brilliant throughout the 188 plates.

Several of the books that I was drawn to were very much about the choice and placement of images.  Among those: 

Walker Evans First and Last (Harper and Row, 1978).  I never really “got” Walker Evans until I saw his photographs sequenced as they are in First and Last.  The pairing of images strengthened the selection of work so I could recognize the depth of his skill as well as his impressive range.

Roni Horn - AKA (Steidl, 2010) is a book of photographs of Horn taken at various ages.  The effectiveness of the book is in its juxtapositions.  Pairs of images face each other across a spread; they are so perfectly matched and so perfectly conversant that I felt at once both a sense of recognition and a feeling of magic. 

Charlotte - Life or Theater? - An Autobiographical Play by Charlotte Salomon ( Viking Press, 1981) is an autobiography in 769 gouache paintings and texts done over the years 1940-41 under the pressure of history.  Horn’s AKA and Charlotte could hardly appear more different but both are very intense and personal books of self portraiture.

Richard B. Sewall, The Life of Emily Dickinson (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1974) is also a portrait.  The book carefully, purposefully, dispels the romantic notion of Dickinson as a recluse.  It portrays her as a woman who chose to be a poet.

Casa Barrigan (Yutaka Saito - 2002 - TOTO Shuppan) has, in one section, 16 photographs of a single architectural detail in varying light.  Saito is committed to and delights in sustained observation.

Tim O'Brien, The Things They Carried (Houghton Mifflin, 1990) is a novel in stories that is structured like a sequence of poems.  Each is a retelling of the same story.  O’Brien understands that truth isn’t singular.

I have chosen books as a means to speak about my art because books are both influences and a form that is important in my work.  Making a book allows me to hold a sequence of images together.  And books can be “read” in various ways.  An accordion book can be opened out and be experienced as both content and architectural object.  Or a book can be held.  A person can sit quietly with a book, can take her time.  Looking at my work in/as a book allows you to experience the materiality of the paper and the unglazed print, the silence of the space between images, and the intimacy of engaging with the content of the work.