Praeterita

When so much of making work as an artist involves slogging away in a room with no idea if it's ever going to be seen by the world outside, it's satisfying when a little success comes your way. I am very proud that two of my handmade books were acquired recently by the Joan Flasch Artist's Book Collection at the School of the Art Institute, Chicago. This collection is one of the most renowned collections of books made by artists in the United States, so it's a huge honour to be included. Here is one of the pieces, an interleaved slit accordion fold of two etchings: And here is the other, a heavily collaged accordion book bound together by sisal: Each piece is now being catalogued and digitized, and at some point in the future they will be on display at the library, possibly in the company of books by artists such as Joseph Beuys: And Christo: And Richard Tuttle: I have paintings in my studio that are six feet square, yet it's these two smal...

Dobar den! Or less formally, Zdravei. Or, hello to my reader(s) in Bulgaria. Seeing that country come up on the readership statistics for this blog rang a bell in the far reaches of my brain somewhere. So I checked on the internet, and my vague memory turned out to be correct: Christo, one of the most famous, some might say notorious, artists of the late twentieth century was born in Bulgaria. Christo, 'Wrapped Reichstag', 1995 He left for the west when he was in his twenties and studying in Prague. Before he met Jeanne-Claude in Paris in 1958 and began the lifelong collaboration with her, he painted portraits to make a living. I thought it would be fun to try and track down one of these pictures on the internet, but so far I've had no luck. Maybe I didn't search long enough, but I wonder also if Christo destroyed his early work once he started getting known for wrapping things up. Many well-known artists have these dark pasts, or a line of work which completely c...