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New West Coast Design: Books
Curators: Mary Austin & Kathleen Burch
In the Gallery Jan 25-Apr 25, 2008
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 Sampler
200 poems by Emily Dickinson This book presents a selection of two hundred poems by Emily Dickinson, one of America's greatest poets, with prints by the acclaimed contemporary artist Kiki Smith. The title of this book was chosen for two reasons. It signals that this is a sampling of the poetry of Emily Dickinson. And it refers to embroidered samplers from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries that inspired the imagery of Kiki Smith. About Sampler: Kiki Smith decided to make images in the manner of samplers, traditionally sewn by young women to demonstrate their domestic skills. She studied examples in the collections of the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco and the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, then made the matrix for each image. She scratched lines in the emulsion of photographic negatives with an etching needle and other sharp-pointed tools, thus allowing light to pass through them when making the photopolymer plates for letterpress printing. For the cover, Smith imitated the stitchery of samplers with short straight and slightly curved strokes. Her subtle patterns of cross-stitches and hatchings become recognizable figures or mysterious forms related to the wondrous imagery in Emily Dickinson's poems. There is no Frigate like a Book | |||
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