Sample pages...
Grace From Simple Stone celebrates the 1992 centenary of the birth of Edna St. Vincent Millay.
Fifteen poems — eleven lyrics and four sonnets — reflect the scope of the poet's literary motifs: a reverence for the natural world, a concern for individual freedom and social justice, the power of friendship, the ecstasy of love, the despair of loss, and an idealistic search for truth and beauty.
Seeking a way to capture the lyricism of the text, the artist devised small paper constructions, photographed their forms, lines, and shadows, and translated the resultant images into lithographs that subtly respond to the poetry.
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Printed on French mouldmade Rives heavyweight paper in four colors — light gray, dark gray, rose gray, and pale green — the illustrations often bleed to the edge of the page. Each creates a space that accommodates a single poem on the 13 1/4 by 19 inch double page format. The longest poem, "Justice Denied in Massachusetts," is set on a three page foldout. Just as Millay restates and transforms imagery and metaphor from one poem to another, the artist repeats and echoes visual clues so that together text and illustration form a closely intertwined sequence. The volume includes an illustrated title page and an afterword by the artist/editor.
The lithographs were hand-pulled by Timothy P. Sheesley, at Corridor Press, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. The text, set in Monotype Dante, was printed by Daniel Keleher, at Wild Carrot Letterpress, Hadley, Massachusetts. Barbara B. Blumenthal handbound the edition in forest green silk over boards, with gold stamping on the front cover and spine.
Limited to fifty copies, signed by the artist. 1992. |
