At Marquand Books we get to design and produce many delightful museum publications. Two of our favorites this year are Pulp Fashion: The Art of Isabelle de Borchgrave (Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco) and New Images Sculpture (McNay Museum in San Antonio). Although each volume’s imagery and aesthetics are radically different, the similarities in materials, craft, and interpretation of subject are intriguing and inspired.
For March’s First Thursday, Marquand Books Studio will present an intimate exhibition of photographs and production spreads from the exhibition catalogues, as well as footage and installation photographs from the exhibitions in San Francisco and San Antonio.
For more than fifteen years, Belgian artist Isabelle de Borchgrave has been producing a completely original body of work that is quite easy to explain but very difficult to categorize. Her central project has been to recreate exquisite, life-size historical costumes entirely from paper. Inspired by rich depictions in early European paintings, iconic costumes in museum collections, photographs, sketches, and even literary descriptions, de Borchgrave skillfully works paper to achieve a textile effect: crumpling, pleating, braiding, feathering, and painting the surface. The artist’s exhibition Pulp Fashion: The Art of Isabelle de Borchgrave is on view February 5–June 5, 2011, at the Legion of Honor as part of the Collection Connections series. Jill D’Alessandro, Curator of Textiles for the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, organized this exhibition.
New Image Sculpture assembles works by emerging and established artists who freely appropriate from art history, ethnographic artifacts, fashion, folk art, hobby crafts, popular culture, and the world of do-it-yourself. These artists transform widely available materials—many found on the shelves of hardware stores—into fanciful re-creations of ordinary things, giving new interpretation to the mundane. Styrofoam, corrugated cardboard, and duct tape replace marble and bronze as primary materials, while ersatz tractors, musical instruments, sofas, and suitcases disguise as portrait busts or minimalist cubes.
René Barilleaux, Chief Curator and Curator of Art after 1945 for the McNay Museum, selected to showcase the following artists: Conrad Bakker, Libby Black, Tom Burckhardt, Margarita Cabrera, Chris Hanson and Hendrika Sonnenberg, Dennis Harper, Kiel Johnson, Kevin Landers, Jean Lowe, Okay Mountain, Kaz Oshiro, Mark Schatz, and Jade Townsend.
Come by the studio on Thursday, March 3rd, from 5 to 7. Copies of both publications will be available for purchase in Paper Hammer, our studio shop.
I started Marquand Books in Seattle over thirty years ago, originally as a graphic design and photography firm specializing in work for artists and art galleries. By the mid-1980s, we had become a small art book publisher. Today, we produce collection books, monographs, and exhibition catalogues for museums throughout the United States and abroad. We have a great staff and clientele.
In 2005, a small group of friends, artists, architects, designers, and I started buying several unused buildings in Tieton, a small orchard town in central Washington. This group became Mighty Tieton. We have created an incubator for artisan businesses in order to provide entrepreneurial opportunities for creative professionals and to improve the economy of this appealing, but struggling, town.
My artisan business there is Marquand Editions | Tieton (ME|T). Our studio, letterpress shop, and bindery creates handmade, limited-edition books for individuals, artists, galleries, collectors, and museums. Our clients are looking for books that are tactile, personal, memorable; they want books that are objects. Some clients visit our studio to help design the books we create for them.
ME|T also produces a line of stationery and gifts that are sold in museums and in our online shop. This past fall, we opened our downtown Seattle shop, Paper Hammer, in our new design office next to the Seattle Art Museum.
The studio creates promotional items for Marquand Books as well. Several times a year we produce amusing design pieces for actual and prospective clients. The Decider is a spin game to help you make quick decisions about vexing quandaries. The Speeder-Upper is a hotel desk bell (made out of paper, of course) that you ring during meetings to encourage long-winded colleagues to get to the point.
Continue reading: “Outliving Obsolescence”
Belgian artist Isabelle de Borchgrave’s exquisite costumes, made entirely out of paper, are on display at San Francisco’s Legion of Honor.
Marquand Books is proud to have produced the accompanying exhibition catalogue for the show, distributed by DelMonico Books/Prestel:
The exhibition catalogue explores the exquisite paper costumes of the Belgian artist Isabelle de Borchgrave. Author Jill D’Alessandro contextualizes de Borchgrave’s work against the rich tapestry of art and couture history, examining how the artist brings long-lost fashions to life through an intricate process of tailoring, crumpling, braiding, pleating and painting paper. Luxurious reproductions of de Borchgrave’s astonishing trompe-l’oeil effects offer an intimate encounter with the work, from the austere white dresses and Papiers à la Mode to the lavish Fortuny and Medici collections.
Pulp Fashion: The Art of Isabelle de Borchgrave is on view through June 5, 2011. Click here for complete exhibition info.
Scores, sketches, and small work from sound artist, kinetic sculptor, musician, and composer Trimpin will be featured at Marquand Books Studio/Paper Hammer from 5-8 p.m. during February’s First Thursday Art Walk.
Marquand Books is celebrating sending the files for the book, Trimpin: Contraptions for Art and Sound, to the printer. A limited-edition slipcase for the book, titled “BookBeatBox,” will be featured and available for purchase, with proceeds supporting the book’s publication. The artist will be in attendance.
Trimpin has received MacArthur and Guggenheim fellowships and has been the subject of a full-length documentary film and a profile in The New Yorker magazine. He has been included in hundreds of shows, performances, and new music festivals.
Marquand Books Studio/Paper Hammer
Thursday, February 3 from 5-8 p.m.
1400 Second Avenue (at Union) in downtown Seattle
