Carol Emmons, retrospectacle, Lawton Gallery, University of Wisconsin, Green Bay, 2017

A smart accordion catalogue for an exhibition of works by an old colleague in the Art Department at the University of Wisconsin-Green Bay during October-November, 2017. An accomplished visual artist and experienced installation artist, Emmons has been mining a very rich vein for many years now, and her work has been featured in numerous shows around the state and the country.  There's a little nostalgia attached to this work as I served as the curator of art at the Lawton gallery for 15 exciting, and happy years from 2000-2015. 

Catalogue design by the former UW-GB student, Don Krumpos, and catalogue essay by Leslie Walfish. For me this work is a reminder of the simple, but rich format for accordion publications that the humble exhibition catalogue can provide.

10 pages, double-sided, individual pages 7.25"(h) and 6"(w), when opened 2ft 6".

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Helia Aluai, Oporto, Portugal, 2010

I picked up this small accordion while on a trip to Porto, Portugal. I was seeing similar faces pasted up in the streets all over the city, and this publication features a number of these very distinctive portraits. This slightly melancholy young woman's face seems to be a recurring image and feature in Aluai's art. 

Aluai was born in Cape Verde in 1973, and is currently living and working in Lausanne, Switzerland working in the fields of scenography, design and illustration. For more of her work check out her blog at: http://helialuai.blogspot.com/

6 pages, single-sided, individual pages 8"(h) and 6"(w), when opened 2ft 11.5".

Coracle Press, A Concertina of Concertinas, Tipperary, Ireland, 2019

A wonderful little accordion that displays all the technical skill and craft that I've come to expect from this longest running publisher of artists' books. And of course, the fact that this book is a survey of all the concertinas that the press has published is delightful too. But what is especially humbling and flattering to me are the words at the end of the book's introduction, "Coracle offers this one by way of thanks to the collection of Stephen Perkins and his accordionpublications blogspot."

10 pages, double-sided, each page 5.5"(h) and 3.5"(w), when opened 1ft 6.5".

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Clifford Hunt and Stephen Perkins, Untitled (a word), and Untitled (Geralmente, a percebe e), mixed-media collaborations: Half Moon Bay (CA) and Madison (WI), 2019

Untitled (a word), 2019

Clifford and I have recently been collaborating on these small accordion books. I start the ball rolling by creating the foundation images and layout, and then send the book to him, and he goes to work on them, and sends them back to me totally transformed. However, it does seem to me that Clifford is putting in more of the real work here! But, I really enjoy their irregular pages and I'm always surprised at the manner in which Clifford transforms what I send him. For me these funky accordions are filled with a sense of fun and spontaneous image and word play — mediums that we both have been working in for a long time.

9 irregular sized pages, when open 2ft 1".

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Untitled (Geralmente, a percebe e), mixed-media collaboration: Half Moon Bay (CA) and Madison (WI), 2019

Untitled (Geralmente, a percebe e), 2019

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