Wednesday, December 2, 2020

Susanne Bürner, L'Isère and Le Travail, Manufactures d'histoire, Deux Ponts, Bresson, France, ed. 750.

Two accordions that take the format of the old fashioned folded postcard strips, and both explore the industrial and post-industrial landscape of the town of L'Isere that lies on the river of the same name, near Grenoble, France. The large factory in the town was a mine for processing the local stone. Interestingly, Isere was also the name of the French ship that delivered to the USA the 214 boxes inside of which was the Statue of Liberty.

This book project was sponsored by local organizations and historical groups interested in documenting the history of this previously important industrial area.

Both accordions: 12 double-sided pages, individual pages 3" (h) x 4" (w), and when fully open 4ft.

back cover

both accordions have the same reverse side with the L'Isere river in the middle



back cover

Molly Colleen O'Connell, Pantsless Pocket Pictionary, 2007

Not exactly sure what is happening here in this comic accordion, but the text begins with "dirty, filthy, sick hippy man cursed by a snakeboner into his current form: a 64-story tall feline guru, who begins the cult of the troubled teen...", and then its all a crazy roller-coaster from there — topless dancers, genital philanthropists, sex crazed gurus, ritual shaves, hypnotic prayers, panagiarions, pantlikas and the shartruse tribe all folded together in a cool combination of texts and quirky drawings, and printed in four colors.

10 pages, double-sided, individual pages 3.5" (h) x 2.5" (w) and when fully open 2ft 1".









back cover

Coco Gordon, SuperSkyWoman: Une Autre, 2003, ed. 90


A funky little accordion from this longtime intermedia artist and friend of Fluxus who was born in Genoa, Italy and made New York her home for most of her life. Gordon now resides in a home at the foothills of the Rockies in Lyons, Colorado and has long focussed on environmental and ecological concerns in her work and this book is now exception.

The text on the inside of the front cover explains that the genesis of this work was a celebration of Milwaukee-based artist, Roy Staab's 'Mobius' reed installation at the Mt. Tremblant Festival in Quebec in August, 2003 (the work can be seen in the final image of the accordion). 

Gordon adopted the 'SuperSkywoman' identity after reading Paul Gunn Allen's book 'Grandmothers of the Light' (1991) which is a collection of goddess stories from Native American culture and an exploration of the shared myths that guided female shamans in their understanding of the sacred. 

This artists' book is one from a collection of her books that are available at Printed Matter, New York. In a recent 2020 interview Gordon states that "I continue to empower myself as a woman who is aging to make deep cultural research visible, and to create an impact on the ethics of thought/behavior and on the mind-body-spirit integration of our modern structure".

14 pages, single-sided, individual pages 3.5" (h) x 5.5" (w), when fully open 7ft 4".






Roy Staab's work can be seen in the final photograph

back cover with Gordon's handmade paper