Nolan Pelletier, Mirror World, Tan & Loose Press, Los Angeles, 2017, ed. 500

This Toronto based illustrator says of Mirror World that "It's fun being able to curate a tiny world and populate it with things you love...that was the main impetus behind Mirror World, putting a bunch of the carnival and dream imagery that was rattling around in my head to paper. I like that with art you can collect the old things you love, while simultaneously creating something new. It's therapeutic."  Inspired by the architecture of Coney Island and carnival signage he states "I love how overwhelming, colourful and electric carnivals are and wanted to capture a bit of that energy. Even though they're still images, I want all the art I do to vibrate with movement and pattern."

Further in his interview with Lucy Bourton (Itsnicethat.com, March, 12, 2018) he notes that "The front side of Mirror World features a crowd of identical men wearing pink and yellow suits and bowler hats. Something about the repetition of the bowler men was mesmerizing to me, and so I just kept repeating them...the back side is a distorted vision of the same scene where everything is reversed—day is night, the scale has changed and buildings are merging etc... As it progresses from left to right, the scene gets more and more surreal until in the final panel it breaks down completely."

6 double-sided pages, individual page 8" x 5.5", and when opened 2' 9".

reverse side

back cover

below is a recent illustration of Pelletier's that was published in the 

New York Times Book Review, Sunday, Nov., 7, 2021

Tanaz Modabber, Other Scales of Prosody, Bombdiabooks, Berlin, Germany, 2017, ed. 500

Tanaz Modabber is an Iranian artist and architect living in Berlin. She graduated from the University of California, Berkeley with a BA in Landscape Architecture and an MA in Architecture. Her practice is involved with site-specific installations, intimate studio works, and architecture projects that have been influenced by her training in both Western and Persian classical music. [from introduction]

The definition of 'prosody' is the patterns of rhythm and sound used in poetry, and the patterns of stress and intonation in a language. Presumably this also includes music as well!

This publication also includes a 5 page double-sided accordion with a text by Cassandra Edlefsen Lasch titled "Meter As Meter As," that explores in greater depth Modabber's artistic practice.

The front side of this accordion is really a historical overview of Persian music, instruments, composition and features images and writings exploring this theme. The reverse side of this features a scroll-like drawing that "considers the principles of Persian classical music, such as cyclicality, continuity, rhythmic structure, and improvisation. This homonymous publication has been compiled through multiple stages of translation, from a geometric foldable structure, over mapping and transcription, to a sound composition." [artists' statement]

This brief introduction to this quite complex accordion really does not do justice to what Modabber is attempting to do here, and it can only serve to give a glimpse of the rich history that Modabber is documenting here. 

44 double-sided pages, individual pages 9" x 7" and when fully opened 25' 8".

accordion with cover

reverse side

statement about the publication

Nancy Karp, Memory/Place, self-published, 2018, ed. 50

A rather unique series of accordions that records the choreography of this three-part dance by Karp. The work was performed at the ODC Theater in San Francisco in 2017.

Below is the statement by Karp that is included as a separate sheet inserted into the box: 

"These three leporellos are visualizations of the dance Memory/Place. They represent the patterns made by the dancers in each of the three sections of the work. I devised this scoring method in 1978 to record the patterns of my dances as they developed in rehearsal. The drawings chosen for this edition do not attempt to cover the entire work, but rather key moments from the dance. The drawings have been sequenced consecutively but are not intended necessarily to flow into one another. They illustrate single moments in time." (2018)

Individual accordions: 10 pages single-sided, individual pages 2.25" x 4.5" and when fully open 3' 9".

inside the back cover