TIA 2005: Art from Ephemera (Mail Art and the Internet)
Text and Image Arts
School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
Fall 2007 - Spring 2009

Sunday, February 3, 2008

Book


I found this project appealing because it touches on a couple of my favorite things: sketchbooks, and collaborations.
I appreciate the methodical way the sketchbook was supposed to arrive and depart on specific days of the week. With that as a constant, I imagine the project went very smooth. The found assemblage of papers and collage that makes up the book lends itself to the aesthetic I'd attribute to the well-traveled but haggard hobo. Though in this case the hobo is a stowaway on a priority mail aircraft, rather than a freight train. Also, I am reminded of another international collaboration, that took an more tech-savvy approach, called The Doodle Down: A Transatlantic Scrawl. The most subversive aspect of this whole project is the way this tattered and beaten sketchbook transforms into this holy relic when exhibited. I have been trying to figure out what to do with my stack of sketchbooks, and the model used here may be a clue. Each spread from the book was reproduced and mounted to an aluminum stand with headphones that explained the thought process in it's creation and development.

good project. *****

-brian butler

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