Amy Borezo Binder (3 results)

Hardcover. Condition: Fine in Fine Archival Case. Deluxe Limited Edition[s]. Deluxe Limited Edition[s]. Hardcover. "Over the last five years, the content of my printing has steadily changed. Despite my past aversion to overtly political artists' books, the social and political upheavals that have riven this country into splinters have slowly seeped into my work. The outrage that has been building inside of me for decades has attained a level of urgency that I can no longer ignore: from the criminal policies of Bush's war on terror, to Obama's enthusiastic embrace of drone assassinations, to the Republican Party's use of Congress as a means for minority rule. These things, and so many more, have gradually changed my understanding of what I want to make and why I want to make it. It is not a change that has been entirely welcome. So I have been exploring ways in which I can make politically inspired work that is both consistent with my aesthetics, and meaningful without being preachy or self-righteous. While choosing the texts for my book Character Traits (2017-2019), I noticed that my choices were colored by the absurd grandiosity of our President and his enablers. The texts I chose referenced these influences in oblique, rather than blatant, terms. Some examples include the Libyan proverb, "My belly before my children," Conrad's "Mr. Kurtz lacked restraint in the gratification of his various lusts.," Fernando Pessoa's, "I have done more in dreams than Napoleon in life," and Melville's, "There is no folly of the beasts of the earth which is not infinitely outdone by the madness of men." Though tentative and restrained, these textual choices were a first step into the political realm. The timidity that I felt about bringing politics into my books was absent in my ephemeral work, and while I worked on Character Traits I began printing small mailings that allowed me to directly express my frustration, anger, and helplessness. These pieces ranged from works by Cicero, Aldus Manutius, and W. H. Auden, to simple, blunt statements such as TRAITOR and LOSER. The cards were distributed to friends, colleagues, and, the latter two, to the politicians who are actively working to undermine the principles of our Constitution. Character Traits provoked another significant realization about how my lettering and type design relate to the content of my books. Throughout my career, my lettering has been divided into two distinct categories: large, interpretative letterforms on one hand, and proper, constrained typefaces on the other. For more than twenty years, I have tried unsuccessfully to find ways for these two alphabetical impulses to merge into some hybrid form. What Character Traits taught me was that it was not the lettering, but the content of my books, that was preventing me from doing this. The template I had been using in my work was to isolate my interpretative or abstract letterforms on single pages and then write notes about them in my more traditional typefaces. In order to merge my two lettering impulses, the content of my work had to change. With all of these ideas swirling in the background, I began work on Three Constitutions. The book was inspired by the increasingly contentious conflict between "originalists," those who view the Constitution as a prescriptive cultural artifact delineating American civilization, and those who view the Constitution as a flexible instrument conceived to adapt to the evolving political, social, and racial realities of American nationhood. This is a conflict with which we are all familiar, but what got me started working on Three Constitutions was that, in the blaring echo chamber of the hourly news cycle, the originalists were, and are, dominating the discussion. The problem with these zealous, self-described Constitutional "patriots" is not dissimilar from that of religious zealots: if (and it's a big IF) they have bothered to read their primary document-the Constitution or whatever their holy book happens to be-they have done so through self-justifying blinders. How many originalists, for instance, concentrate on the fact that the fourth phrase of the Constitution's preamble is to "insure domestic Tranquility" or that the sixth is to "promote the general Welfare?" How many self-proclaimed Proud Boys understand that the second amendment is an amendment, and therefore provides its own justification for being revisited and amended further? How many red-hatted rioters understand that their actions directly contradict the Constitution's prescriptions for its own protection: that their actions are not patriotic but seditious. During the three-month period in which Sarah Moody and I printed Three Constitutions (November 2020 to February 2021) there were many tragic examples of the conflicts described above. During that time, Joseph Biden defeated Donald Trump in the presidential election by a margin of seventy-four electoral college votes and more than seven million popular votes. Rather than concede defeat, Trump has continued to promote the baseless claim that the election was rigged by the Democratic party and its "deep-state" operatives. At a rally on January 6, 2021, Trump incited a violent insurrection of the United States Capitol building, an action that is clearly described in the Constitution as treasonous (Article III, Section 3). Despite this, the mob that carried out Trump's failed coup attempt overwhelmingly identified as people willing to die or, more likely, kill to defend the Constitution. Their actions resulted in the deaths of five people. It is well known that Trump does not read, but the glaring disconnect between basic constitutional principles and the actions of Trump's followers raises the question of whether these self-described patriots have read any part of the Constitution besides the Second Amendment. It is more likely that they depend on charismatic commentators or algorithmic echo chambers for their constitutional beliefs. Three Constitutions is my response to these events and the culture that bred them. It.…

Hardcover. Condition: Fine in Fine Archival Box. Limited Edition. Limited Edition. Hardcover. "The ten prints in Ten Views of Florida are inspired by the titles of books that are banned in Florida public schools. In an effort to situate myself in an imagined future where the book banners have succeeded and the lists of banned titles are all that remain, I specifically chose to work with books that I had not read.For most of the prints in Ten Views of Florida I tried to make imagery that responded to both the prompt of a banned book title and to some other verifiable reality of Floridian life that is under attack by the MAGA movement and its lackeys, in this case climate change. The 'view" of Florida inspired by the title of Toni Morrison's The Bluest Eye references bathymetric maps of oceanic levels, the iris and pupil of an eye, and the sink holes that are proliferating in Florida." (from the printer). Tight, bright, and unmarred. np. Illus. (color plates). Limited numbered edition, this being _____.…

First Edition. First Edition. Russell Maret [printer, designer, and afterword]; Nina Schneider [bibliographic descriptions]; Carolee Campbell [commentary]; Harry Reese [foreword]; Annie Schlechter [photography]. One of the 77 numbered copies that includes tip-ins of original material. A lovely catalogue raisonné of the work of Carolee Campbell and the Ninja Press. Russell Maret writes of her: "It takes a special kind of person to know that what one is working on is not ready to be discussed. It takes someone.who unhurriedly allows her books to germinate in her lizard brain until they are ready to be dispatched into the world. With each new book Carolee teaches the rest of us how it should be done - not how to make books like hers , but like her, to make books the way the books want to be made." The heavily annotated bibliography includes books, broadsides, commissions and collaborations, ephemera, reviews, criticism, and writing. The annotations include comments by Carolee on the making of each book or broadside. "Imagine this movie: A self-possessed teenager in Los Angeles, brought up by a grandmother because of her mother's infirmities and her father's alcoholism, flees to New York City after high school to pursue a dream. Working first as a hatcheck girl in a famous nightclub, and then waiting tables in Mafia restaurants, she reinvents her life from the inside-out in classes taught by elite drama teachers and is offered a bit part on daytime television. Avoiding temptation and putting everything at risk again, she evolves into a television star and eventually a soap opera queen. Meanwhile, she exhibits photographs in New York galleries, practices Japanese martial arts, and competes with her team in Japan. She wins an Emmy for a dramatic role, but abruptly quits acting, returns to California, and takes up whitewater rafting in the Southwest. Nearly fifty, she turns her back on every success she ever knew to start all over again as an entry-level art student in a program she has to explain. Twenty years later, she gains recognition as one of the most accomplished, distinctive, and influential printer-publishers of her generation." [foreword]. Tight, bright, and unmarred; folder bright and clean. Quarterbound, green leather spine, green printed paper boards, gilt lettering, color photographic frontispiece tipped in. Narrow fo. 129pp. Illus. (color and b/w plates, tipped in photos, etc). Numbered limited edition, this being 20 of 77 plus hors commerce bringing total to 102. Signed by all involved. Laid in copy of An Arguement for Lying Fallow / The Habit of Risk.…