Dogan Surek, Real Time, lino-cut, 1998

Always nice to find a Surek accordion, check out the others in this blog. This is a rather intriguing one, however, I'm finding it hard to decipher. The red band from California to Thailand on pages 3 & 4 covers a total of 18 times zones, with 9 hours on either side of the Greenwich Mean Time line. And then there's the book's title printed across another four pages, with another four pages in the latter part of the book filled with images that would seem to take the viewer into the larger galaxy beyond our world. The backwards title introduces another indecipherable clue as to the book's theme. If any readers can help me with this please respond at the end of this post!

12 single sided pages, individually 5.75" x 4", and when fully open 4ft.

John Shimon, Untitled, cyanotype, 2021

Front cover

The first cyanotype accordion for this blog! This work was sent to me by my friend John Shimon, an offbeat and well established Wisconsin photographer based in Appleton. Accompanying the accordion was a postcard with a note stating, "An experiment with the accordion form!" This monochromatic work is a delight with a gestural subtext that imbues the work with both depth and movement. Don't stop there John, I want to see more!!

8 pages, individually 7" x 5", and when fully opened 3ft 4".

Reverse side of accordion

Back cover

An example of a cyanotype end of the year card (2021) 

from John and his partner Lauren Semivan

Anders Nilsen, ABRAXAS: Box landscape with chase scene, 2019, ed. 250

Front of the wraparound cover

I'm posting Anders' story of how this book came about and where it fits in with his other book projects, as well as the technical issues involved in publishing it. 

"One day back in 2012 I got an email from my friend Monica Choy, inviting me to participate in a group show. She was sending several artists small blank hand-made accordion books, asking that we keep them as sketchbooks for a month and then send them back to be shown in the show at Hellion Gallery in Portland (I was living in Minneapolis at the time). After one or two false starts I ended up doing a long, continuous landscape drawing, depicting a chase scene unfolding through the landscape, populated with weird flowers and colored boxes. I was about to publish Rage of Poseidon at the time, also an accordion (see this blog), and was interested in exploring the form a little more. I got into it enough that I ended up attaching a couple extra feet of paper to extend the scene.

The piece ended up having resonance in my other work for the next several years. The fantastical plant forms, and the idea of a long continuous landscape are recapitulated in A Walk in Eden, the coloring book I did in 2016. And the characters and the boxes feed pretty directly into Tongues. In retrospect I think of the piece as a sort of 'proto-prequel' to that book both visually and thematically.

The original piece was later shown in Minneapolis in a book-arts-and-comics exhibition called The Book in Extemis at MCAS during the PFC residency in 2015, and again at the Art Gallery of Western Australia in Perth in their Comic Tragics show in 2015. Showing the original as an object or as a drawing was great, but I've wanted to figure out a way to publish it ever since the Hellion show. That was easier said than done. Printing and folding a seven foot long accordion is not a simple or cheap proposition. And figuring out a good binding is even less so. I played with various ideas and prototypes over the years and taught myself some rudimentary bookbinding techniques, eventually settling on a more or less workable compromise. And so now its available..."  New Accordion Book: Box Landscape with Chase Scene — Anders Nilsen

15 single-sided pages, individually 5" x 7.25", and when fully open 6ft 2".

Front page of the accordion

Back of wraparound cover

Hokusai, Thirty-six Views of Mount Fuji, Prestel Verlag, Munich, London, New York, 2019/2021

Accordion and its slipcase

A smart and compact reproduction of Japanese artist Katsushika Hokusai's (1760-1849) famous series of prints from the early 1830s. The brochure that accompanies the accordion has a text by Amelie Balcou in which she outlines the importance of this series, both formally, as well as the importance of Mount Fuji to the larger Japanese culture. She also includes brief comments on each individual print. 

Its interesting to me to ponder the issues involved in reproducing an artists' works in a format (accordion) that they were never originally presented in (to my knowledge anyway). Either way this is an original and economically priced introduction to this important artists' works.

91 single-sided pages, individually 6.25" x 9", and when fully open 47ft 4.75"

Two different views of the accordion

Pascale Estellon, ABÉCÉDAIRE, Editions des Grandes Personnes, Paris, 2016, 2nd edition

Cover of the book's wraparound cover

This is a really well designed abécédaire or alphabet book, with 2 page spreads for each letter coupled with many foldable and interactive elements inserted throughout. The book feels comfortable in one's hands and the paper is thick, with a firm quality, that I'm sure would bear up well in its interactions with very young people and their inquisitive hands and fingers!

26 double-sided pages, individually 11.75" x 8.25" and when fully opened 17ft 10.5".

Front page of the accordion

Reverse side of book

Back page of the accordion

Cover of the wraparound cover

R. Clarke-Davis, "a bOOK OF WaNdER What'S bECOMINg cOMMONPLaCE," and "Um Livrinho Cotidiano: Porém," Kiddy Viddy Press, 2021

Two recent accordion/puzzle books from Clarke-Davis. The first one, a bOOK OF WaNdER What'S bECOMINg cOMMONPLaCE, is the most explicitly political of the books he's sent me. All the photographs were taken in the town of Kenosha, Wisconsin, which has recently become infamous for the acquittal of 17-year old Kyle Rittenhouse in the killing of 2 anti-racist demonstrators and injuring another, during a protest against the police shooting of Jacob Blake. This work is a powerful paean to the events that have unfolded in Kenosha since Blake's shooting on August 23, 2020, and the final photograph on the back cover literally points to how much work has to be done as we move forward.

The second accordion, Um Livrinho Cotidiano: Porém is a travel journal with photographs from Brazil (I think!) with a powerful central panorama of 5 photographs of street art.

Both books: 10 double-sided pages measuring 5.5" x 4.25", when opened 17" x 5.5", and when the work is unfolded 11" x 17".

a bOOK OF WaNdER What'S bECOMINg cOMMONPLaCE, 2021

Back Cover

                               Um Livrinho Cotidiano: Porém, 2021

Back Cover