Bison Time
Oakland, CA: Rocinante Press, 2022. Number 7 of 10 copies signed and numbered by the book artist. Michelle Wilson is an interdisciplinary thinker, whose work involves papermaking, printmaking, book arts, installation, and social practice. Her practice includes frequent collaborations with other artists; in particular her ongoing collaboration with Anne Beck as the Rhinoceros Project. In her artist's statement she writes: "My work takes the form of paper, installations, sculptures, prints, artist books, collages, and social practice interventions, all based on handmade paper I make myself. This paper is typically from plants I grow myself, or invasive plants I harvest, for which my studio practice becomes a means of clearing habitat space for native ecology. Paper is traditionally considered a substrate; however in my work the very fibers of its making transcend this to become signifier, content, documentation of history and place, and embodiments of site-specificity. My work addresses a changing world, and the complexities of meaning, sentiment, and consequences therein." Bison Time is a musing on the history of buffalo (bison) in Pennsylvania and their extermination there. The book reflects on material metaphors and how what is lost is remembered. This work was made entirely by hand in the unseeded occupied Ohlone territory of Huichin, now known as Oakland, California. The papers in this book are handmade in the Western tradition from a mixture of cotton and abaca with watermarks cut by hand. Papers were printed with hand carved linoleum blocks and photopolymer plates. To create this inventive and impassioned book, Wilson used watermarks to illustrate each of the figures that accompany the text that document the history and extinction of bison in Pennsylvania. The work comprises eight loose pages, each with a framed watermark with an image of a bison. The pages are housed in a clamshell box. The clamshell box is covered in handmade paper dyed with walnuts by the artist to resemble buffalo hide. A white paper illustration of the head of a bison is affixed to the front cover. In fine condition. Measures 10 x 13 inches. ARTB/031924. Fine. More