This blog site will continue to show examples of my art works as they occur.
ANDREW NORRIS is an artist who enjoys making extraordinary books which possess all the imagination and skill of a painting or piece of sculpture... (review from What's On in London 1995)
A selection of pictures of my artist's books as a prelude to exhibitions to be held simultaneously in Zagreb and Bristol, England, to mark International Literacy Day on September 8th, 2008
Artist's Books are art works that are often, but not exclusively, in the form of a book. This book-form itself may take on a variety of shapes. They may be published in multiples, in editioned versions or as unique works.
Artist’s books, while being a convenient name for this genre of art work is, for me, only appropriate in as much as that the principle of books, to gradually reveal their content page by page or detail by detail fits all the works I make. Therefore, I consider a stick, with its text spiraling along its length, a mathematical construction that twists and turns to meet words with images or a cow-hide covered frieze of friesian cows as falling under the same ‘artist’s book’ umbrella. In common, too, these works have a tactile quality, satisfying to hold and explore with the hand.
The shape of the art-book-work is always driven by its content, and it is often that the same idea will appear in a variety of formats. Since the format will always bring something to the content, comment on it in someway, alter its context and bring out a different resonance. This is particularly true of the works broadly titled, POETree, where the same few words can occur in different forms altering the way in which these words are read, meanings understood and even the way that the objects are handled, particularly if the text is printed on leaves rather than stones.
earth then earthen
i The Poem Tree, 2005
ii An Ear to the Earth, 2006
iii 1000 Years, 2006
iv Field Songs, 2008
The Poem Tree.
In 1844 Joseph Tubbs climbed to the top of
Wittenham Clumps in Berkshire, England,
to carve a poem on a beech tree, this is his story
which continues to resonate up to the present.
Full text appears on http://thepoemtree.blog.hr
An Ear to the Earth
is a sequence of 14 poems
written from the point of view of fields, soil, seeds,
animals, plants and trees.
1000 Years
A group of oak trees give an account
of their lives over a millennium.
Field Songs
Takes the form of a series of parallel
monologues between the present and former
owner of a house and piece of land in Croatia.
These monologues occupy similar ‘spiritual’
space if not temporal.
Collectively, these four works entitled, earth then earthen,
explore identity and the nature of one’s
relationships to and presence in the natural
environment.
* * * *
Film of the Poem Tree taken on 8mm and video
between 1991 and 1995.
