Con•nec•tion: Forty Years of Artist’s Books

by Arielle Bagood

Though galleries and museums may be closed, there are an abundance of digital archives and resources that remain accessible through the web. One of these, Ripe with Possibilities: Redefining a Book Through an Artist’s Eyes, is an online archive from the Glenbow Western Research Centre at the University of Calgary, exhibiting the work of artist bookmaker Lise Melhorn-Boe.

Lise Melhorn-Boe has contributed to various Chemical Entanglements projects at CSW, including the “Visualizing Toxic Subjects” exhibit in collaboration with UC Irvine’s Center for Ethnography. She is an artist from Ontario who weaves feminist concepts and environmental theory with textile and sewing techniques to create “artist’s books” and sculptural bookwork.

If not for our self-isolation during the pandemic, Con•nec•tion: Forty Years of Artist’s Books by Lise Melhorn-Boe (narrated by Rebecca Korn), would currently be on exhibit at the Window Art Gallery in Kingston, Ontario, and celebrating Melhorn-Boe’s four decades of artist’s bookmaking. While the exhibition has been postponed, can be purchased from the gallery or from the artist. The catalogue includes images of some of the books that will be in the exhibition, along with an insightful essay and an interview with the artist (both by Rebecca Korn).

Melhorn-Boe also discusses her forty years in bookmaking in a video with Hotam Press Bookshop/Gallery, where another exhibition Sewing Poems is on display.