Disturbances
Urbana, Illinois: Ann Tyler, 2025. Hardcover. Signed by the book artist. Ann Tyler grew up in Champaign, Illinois, and moved to Chicago in 1975 after earning a graduate degree in graphic design. She is an accomplished book artist and printmaker whose work has been featured in permanent collections at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, the Tate Gallery Library in London, and the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago. Tyler's work frequently examines human violence, both individual and state-sponsored, often portraying it through abstract means. Other projects have explored LGBTQ+ identity, hate crimes, and the history of lynching. She uses a variety of narrative strategies and formal approaches in her books, which often incorporate both language and image.
Ann says about her work as a book artist: "In my earlier works, I mined the public arena for much of the collaged material of my books. The stories revealed were always within the commonwealth but needed a particular assemblage to become visible. My current work, while still culling from our known world, requires a greater degree of movement away from the "original." The created becomes the "real" while the "original" is transformed into metaphor. "The methods of structuring my books, the use of narrative to create an emotional and intellectual experience for the viewer, the techniques of image creation and writing, and the material use and references all parallel my design profession and role as an educator."
She says of this new and fascinating work: "Open up Disturbances and you will find the depthless blue of deep space in contrast with daylight’s startling brilliance. Enigma vying with vision. It is this world that we, earth’s inhabitants, navigate: the seemingly stable and the ever-shifting. Disturbances is a speculative tale of human migration and displacement, with landscape that references that of the American Southwest; characters who are cartoon-like but never cartoonish; geologic, temporal, and social upheaval; and moveable structures that facilitate and underscore the viewer’s unavoidable participation. Maps give no access to the vicious truth, Wis awa Szymborska writes, but this tale remaps it."
The book is bound in dark blue cloth with a foil ornament stamped on the front cover. It is inkjet printed on MOAB Entrada Rag Natural, Mohawk Superfomd amd Amtoqie Emdleaf papers. The book’s end papers are a riff on wallpaper. The pattern is constructed from eight different gun logos, and all the firms manufactured guns used in the assaults. In fine condition. Measures 10 ½ inches w x 13 ½ inches h x 1 ¾ inches, closed; Open it is 21 inches x 13.5 inches. 176 pages plus end sheets. ARTB/091525. Fine.
Item #38220
Price: $650.00