Rebecca Chamlee

Simi Valley, California

My Partial Tongue

(recipient Bruce Peel Special Collections Library, University of Alberta purchase award)

paper, goat leather

9½ x 13¾ closed; 18½ x 13¾ open

edition of 30

© 2011

$500

My Partial Tongue, by poet Martha Ronk, uses words and phrases from an essay on gardens and plants by Sir Thomas Brown, a 17th century essayist who wrote about the order in nature. The poems have a great deal of space in them, space suggestive of what is missing and of silence, and reflect a feeling of distance from the natural world that seems to be disappearing. Prints of plants and feathers reflect the images invoked by the text.

Letterpress printed using handset lead type and photopolymer plates. Separate boards binding with paste paper covers and goat leather spine. Images of plants and feathers by Rebecca Chamlee.

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A Reason of Water

paper, bookcloth

6½ x 9¾ closed; 13 x 9¾ open

edition of 30

© 2011

$250

Barbara Maloutas’ poem A Reason of Water is a poetic and visual exploration of the poet/book artist as archivist. Practical Housekeeping, an 1883 publication, provides some of the words and phrases in the lyrical prose poems. The archaic feel of the typography mimics the quality of Practical Housekeeping.

Letterpress printed from photopolymer plates, wood type, and water textures cut from linoleum. Drumleaf sewn-board binding with a cloth spine and boards covered in paste paper. Water textures by Rebecca Chamlee. Household gadgets are found images.

Rebecca Chamlee has published contemporary literature in innovatively designed, letterpress printed, hand-bound limited-edition fine press and artist’s books under the imprint of Pie In The Sky Press since 1985. She is an associate professor of book arts at Otis College of Art and Design in Los Angeles.