By: Amy Chen, CLIR Postdoctoral Fellow
The Hunter Museum of Art in Chattanooga, Tennessee is hosting Preface: An Introduction to Artists’ Books, an exhibition largely drawn from the holdings of the W.S. Hoole Library. The show opened on March 28, 2014 and will remain up through June 15, 2014 — which gives interested viewers less than a month to go visit!
Tuscaloosa to Chattanooga
Items borrowed from the W.S. Hoole Library include work by the following book artists: Jenna Adams, Lynn Avadenka, the Combat Paper Project, Julie Chen, Nicole Eiland, Susan King, Ellen Knudson, Emily Martin, Amy Pirkle, and Coriander Reisbord.
Pirkle is a graduate of the University of Alabama book arts program and a current instructor at UA; she discussed her work, Smoke (2008), with Cool@Hoole last year. Smoke is now on display at the Hunter.
While twelve of Hoole’s artists’ books are in Chattanooga, many more are still available to be seen in the Hoole reading room on the second level of Mary Harmon Bryant Hall.
Mark Doty’s White Kimono (1997) Hoole Library Book Arts Collection Oversize PS3554.O798 W45 1997x
For example, come see Mark Doty’s White Kimono (1997), which was published in a limited edition of 40 copies by Tuscaloosa’s Enstar Press. Mark Doty won the National Book Award for his volume Fire to Fire: New and Selected Poems (2008) and is the only American poet to win the UK’s T.S. Eliot Prize. Not usually listed in Doty’s bibliography, White Kimono is as rare as it is beautiful.
Below are images from The Uncommon Perspective of MEJ Colter (1993) by Lynn Avadenka and Emily Martin’s The Anxiety Alphabet (1998). Both books are from Hoole’s collection. The photographs are courtesy of Hunter Museum’s dropbox.
