I hate talking about my work. I’d rather let the photos or the ink or the weird little bits of paper do the talking. But if I don’t say something, this book just sits quietly in a drawer in my studio…and that feels worse. So here we go.
I made Confessions of a French Stenographer (A Tracing of a Frazetta Painting) in 2015. It’s a one-of-a-kind artist’s book built from scissors, PVA, my Vandercook 291 OS, and a box of flea market gold. The title comes from a 1920’s dirty little smutty smut-smut book I found on one of my “Sunday Funday” flea market adventures. Probably Long Beach. Or maybe when Fairfax High’s was still decent? Everything else—the collaged pin-ups, found snapshots, bureaucratic ephemera, naughty nudie slides and typewritten drama—is all my work.
I had run across Joseph Cornell’s Manual of Marvels a few years prior. I was amazed. Cornell turned an ordinary book into a masterpiece. His boxes are great, but his Manual of Marvels? It inspired me to create, and isn’t that what great art does? Instead of Cornell’s Victorian whimsy, I opted for something… I dunno. I’d like to say mine’s a little sleazy. Maybe kinda funny. Definitely strange.
It’s a hand-assembled, letterpress-printed one-off that’s been sitting quietly in a drawer in my studio since its completion.
Until now.
