Tucson, AZ: Suzanne Moore, 2024. Hardcover. Variant edition of 26 copies, numbered A to Z, of which this is Letter B. In preparation for creating this book, questions 032724 were composed by the artist and offered by friends and family. The questions were of existence, passion and playful curiosity. Answers were supplied by Suzanne, her friends, relatives, and even Kermit the Frog. According to the artist: "This exploration in text and imagery presents some of the endless possibilities of how Q variations - and accompanying questions - are distinct - colorful, or “black and white”, playful or more controlled, tiny or expansive - varying widely - as do human personalities and varying viewpoints.
I began this edition in 2001, imagining it as a way to explore printmaking techniques as I considered the possibilities designing this singular letter - Q. I made a series of manuscripts (2008, ongoing), using excerpts of Rilke’s Letters to a Young Poet. Rilke’s words of advice and cautions, among them: to be attentive to nature, and to “live the questions”, reflect the potential of opening mind and soul to “live everything now”, and to the power of inquiry. The hijacking of the letter Q for the darkest social and political purposes made me reconsider my work to explore this quirky and curious 17th letter of the alphabet, building on the manuscripts that led to this edition. As the effects of Q-anon shake the American psyche, politics and society and it seemed like NOW was the time to make these books, with the text now composed of all manner of questions, by me, and contributed by colleagues, friends and family. Rescuing Q is part of my focus on reclaiming Q for all the best purposes - to extol Q, as a key to Latin-rooted words of inquiry and “the search”. inspire sincere questions with an open mind, and exploring myriad answers, and providing an antidote to the How does sincere questioning inspire and generate deeper conversation, and how do we initiate conversations from common ground, to enquire more deeply, consider new options, and invent new commonly beneficial solutions?"
Designed and created by Suzanne Moore with her original paintings, prints, collage, deep-etch embossing, gilding, and hand coloring in pencil and gouache. Letterpress printed with polymer plates created from drawings by Moore and solar plates by Sandy Tilcock at Lone Goose Press (Bisbee, AZ) with collaborative typography (including the questions) letterpress printed by Jessica Spring at the Springtide Press. Bound in black Cave Paper by Don Glaister. Each book includes a unique monoprint or painting in a paper folder that matches the binding of the book. Housed in a black cloth covered box with paper title label to spine. Unpaginated. ARTB/ Suzanne Moore is a painter, printmaker and lettering artist, whose eclectic interests meld in the diversity of her artists' books. She weaves word and painted image with form, content and structure into spaces which invite the reader to engage, examine and inquire. Her books blend abstract and representational imagery, rich color and surface treatments with textual content and contemporary lettering to create work that obscures the line between word and image, legibility and abstraction. Suzanne's work is exhibited widely, and her books have been acquired for private and public collections in the U.S. and Europe. Among them are the Pierpont Morgan Library, The Library of Congress and the rare book collections of Smith College, Wellesley College, Harvard University, Bowdoin College, Princeton, Yale, Columbia University, and the University of Washington. She speaks about her work and teaches in the US and abroad on contemporary manuscript book design, conceptual ideas in book design, and on the painting and collage techniques. She is one of three Americans on the team who created contemporary interpretive illuminations (2001-11) for the St. John's Bible, the Wales-based project lead by Donald Jackson. Commissioned by the Abbey at St. John’s University in Collegeville, Minnesota, this is the first hand written and illuminated Bible created in 500 years. Fine. More