Coron, Béatrice, book artist; Monique Lallier, binding
New York: Béatrice Coron, 2022-2023. Number 3 of 6 copies. French born Béatrice Coron is a renowned artist whose work includes book arts, fine art, and public art. Her work can be found in major museum collections, libraries, as well as private collections. Her books are fascinating creations made through cutting images in paper or Tyvek. Cristina Favretto, Head of Special Collections at the University of Miami describes her creations in Coron's "artfragments" portfolio: "There is a palpable joy in the work of Béatrice Coron, the kind of joy we felt as children in unwrapping a particularly enticing holiday gift. But...for Béatrice the gift is a sheet of Tyvek...or paper, and the stories to be unearthed and unleashed within and through the medium." Coron describes her book work: "For the last 20 years, I have been exploring visual storytelling in artist books, paper cutting and public art. Collecting memories from individuals and communities, I stage narrative allegories in silhouette to create a dialogue with the viewer in playful fantasies. These visual chronicles record archetypal stories that transcend time and space. I have been fascinated by the relation of people to their space and the sense of belonging. Using papercutting where everything is cut from a single piece of Tyvek, the profusion of individual stories makes a coherent whole world." [From her website]
This book was inspired by "The Conference of the Birds," a Persian poem of 1177 by Sufi poet Farid ud-din Attar. Ab mid bin Ab Bakr Ibr h m (c. 1145 – c. 1221; Persian,is better known by his pen-names Far d ud-D n and A r of Nishapur (Attar means apothecary), was an Iranian poet, theoretician of Sufism, and hagiographer from Nishapur who had an immense and lasting influence on Persian poetry and Sufism. He wrote a collection of lyrical poems and number of long poems in the philosophical tradition of Islamic mysticism, as well as a prose work with biographies and sayings of famous Muslim mystics. The Conference of the Birds, The Book of Divine, and Memorial of the Saints are among his best known works [Wikipedia].
Coron states that the papercuts created for this book display the journey of life through the seven valleys. While keeping the symbolism of the epic poem, the images also represent the environmental and conflictual challenges of today. Her marvelous papercuts were done with dark blue hand-cut Lokta paper, backed in white paper to showcase the papercut images. Each panel has a word: Start, Believe, Explore, Forget, Merge, Trust, and Fuse that reflect the meaning of the images. The book has an accordion structure that allows either to be opened like a codex or to be unfolded to show all of the panels at once. The book is housed loosely in a green leather folder with the images of a bird and the artist's name made in tin affixed to the cover. The book in turn is housed in a bright yellow leather clamshell box with tin images of birds and a title label affixed to the cover. The edges of the box are covered in decorated tin. Each box binding in the edition is unique. Noted bookbinder Monique Lallier made the bindings for both the book and box. A striking production in fine condition. The book measures 7 x 6.5 inches when closed and 7 x 49 inches when opened. ARTB/090523. More