Field Trip - Special Collections UWM Libraries

UWM Special Collections
Artist Book Collection

by: Kylee Diedrich

Wednesday, March 8, as a class we visited the Special Collections at the UWM Library.  I have visited the area many times before, for work related events and also class events.  I find the Special Collections to be full of great resources and objects to help students learn and explore possibilities in many realms of study. Librarian Max Yela placed numerous photographic artist's books out for us all to view.  Some were unique hand-made artist's books, while many were trade publications.

The books I found most interesting and I engaged with most were the artist-made books that showed the artist's hand in some way.  They were unique and visually appealing, giving a unique views on someone's idea of a book. Nothing is wrong with printed books from a commercial publisher, I just found myself drawn to the special and unique books.

While talking with Max Yela more individually he brought out more artist books for me to look at. He also helped me decide a possible direction for my own artist book for my senior thesis project.  I have been trying to decide a direction to go and visiting the Special Collection and talking with Max I was able to decide on a medium and style.

These artist books were among the ones Max brought out to me that influence my decision to build my own  artist's book.  To create something by hand, and create a physical object that is not reproducible. 

Max also pointed out an artist book (one of many copies) made by one of my professors Nicolas Lampert. I found his style to be interesting and inspired me to think more about how I would incorporate my images in the book as well as binding techniques. 

While viewing the other books, I found page numbering, text, poems, and sound to be interesting approaches to creating a book.  I decided on a style I liked in terms of image, text, and page number placements that can add to what my project is trying to address. This visit made me more excited about my own book making and I look forward to what might transpire in the next half of the semester. 

Ideas/Fantasm - Matthew Gamber

Matthew Gamber
Defining The Ephemeral Nature of Photography
by David Kieckhefer

Matthew Gamber explores the ephemeral image in a variety of ways with and without cameras. Eventually all surfaces decay and images fade, but Gamber embraces the fleeting nature of the image that is created by light and is eventually destroyed by it. His exhibition, Unfixed, brings together objects and images that cause us to consider mortality, time and memory, and the beauty of moments that can never last.

Installation shot from exhibition UNFIXED: The Fugitive Image

"Gamber's new project, Any Color You Like, is a bit like losing the sense of taste right as you are about to bite into something you have been looking forward to eating, and the expectation of that enjoyment usually comes from the memory of having eaten it before.  By removing the memory and one of the senses, the experience changes. Gamber's images look at objects that we have traditionally seen in color and that speaks to the idea of color, and force us to see and think about them anew."
- Aline Smithson

Matthew Gamber holds a BFA from Bowling Green State University and an MFA from the School of the Museum of Fine Arts/Tufts University. He is an Assistant Professor in the Visual Arts Department at the College of the Holy Cross, having previously taught at Lesley University College of Art and Design, Boston College, School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Savannah College of Art and Design, Massachusetts College of Art and Design. He has also previously worked on archive and digitization projects with Harvard University and the Boston Public Library for Digital Commonwealth.

Phantasm - Dreams - Emma Powell

Emma Powell
By Steffen Francisco

The art world today is marked by the burden of the artist to affect change on the greater world around them.  Every piece of art made has to have a Meaning with a capital "M", it has to, in the words of Ghandi, be the change the artist wishes to see in the world.  Not all artists choose to aspire to such lofty goals, however.  Emma Powell is an artist that explores her own mind, her fantasies, dreams and ideas.  Her artwork is stunning and haunting, it stays with you after viewing it and makes you want to see more.  All without needing to have overtones of political change, women's rights, gender identity or whatever other cause is in vogue at the moment.

Powell has several bodies of work that she constructs over years of creation, each a fully explored dissertation on the subject contained therein. Her current work, Svala's Saga, is a collaborative series illustrating a wholly original fairy tale.  The artists use a combination of photographic processes together referred to as "pigment over palladium" to give the images an otherworldly fae feeling without tying them to a single historic era where one or the other of the individual processes would be found.

What draws me to this artist and her work, aside from the pure beauty of it, is the feeling of whimsy and exploration.  Powell seeks to understand her own mind and how it works.  Another of her series, In Search of Sleep, recreates the wild adventures of the kind of stories her father would tell her as a child before bed.  These are not always sweet images and they are not particularly comforting as a whole, but they do serve to induce a wild, dreamscape mindset where odd combinations of ideas are commonplace and the rules are subverted for the purpose of narrative.  These kind of explorations in the realm of art photography, as well as the materials and processes she uses, are what make Powell stand out among photographers.