Pages/Panels

I rarely get a chance to show my artists books so I'm excited for to have the opportunity to show a selection from 2010 to 2017 in the Atrium Gallery at the Lunder Arts Center in Cambridge.

Lines / Grids / Patterns ZINE

Lines/Grids/Patterns Zine from the Sketchbook Project, designed by the fabulous Flight Design Co. 

The Brooklyn Art Library, home of the Sketchbook Project has just published a series of curated Zines featuring work from artists around the world. I'm thrilled that my sketchbook from 2011 (based on my love of the chairs in Jardin des Tuileries in Paris) was included in the Lines / Grids / Patterns edition.

Get your copy HERE!

Haruki Murakami: Men without Women

Out today across the globe...Men without Women by Haruki Murakami

"Dreams are the kinds of things you can … borrow and lend out."

"Across seven tales, Haruki Murakami brings his powers of observation to bear on the lives of men who, in their own ways, find themselves alone. There are vanishing cats and smoky bars, lonely hearts and mysterious women, baseball and the Beatles, woven together to tell stories that speak to us all."

The fabulous design team at Vintage Books wrote a blog post about the cover process, you can check out what they have to say here and read the official release from Penguin Books UK! 

And check out the story behind "The Frequency of Falling," the print used on the cover!

A Very Small Guide to Chair Constellations

"A Very Small Guide to Chair Constellations." (2017)

A tiny little book measuring only 2 1/8 x 2 3/4 inches (which is exactly 1/8th of a standard US letter sheet of paper), printed in 2 colors on vintage 1940s onion skin typewriter paper. It is bound with handmade marble paper from Florence and hand sewn with red silk thread. There are 32 chair constellations total over 36 pages.

A Very Small Guide to Chair Constellations

2.125 x 2.75" page size, 4.25 x 2.75" opened

hand sewn signature binding

signed and numbered edition of 20

2017

copyright Kate Castelli

Artists' Book Cornucopia VII

I'm thrilled to have my book "Child of the Moon" selected to be included in the exhibition Artists' Book Cornucopia VII.

The seventh in an annual series of international juried exhibitions of contemporary artists' bookworks, Artists' Book Cornucopia VII includes work by 40 artists from the United States, Canada and Argentina. The series highlights a broad spectrum of works created under the artists book work umbrella, with unique sculptural works exhibited alongside more traditionally bound and printed works.

This year's selections were made by Margery N. Sly, Director of Special Collections and Kimberly Tully, Rare Book Curator, Samuel L. Paley Library, Temple University, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

The exhibition runs from September 16 through October 29, 2016.


Abecedarian Gallery 
910 Santa Fe Drive, #101
Denver, Colorado
http://www.abecedariangallery.com/

Friday Inspiration: Cosmographics (Part 2: Eclipses)

Johannes Regiomontanus Calendar published in Venice in 1482

{left} Solar Eclipses Physician’s Almanac, England ca. 1430-1431 {right} Kalender of the Shepherdes Table for Eclipses published in the 1490s in Paris by Guy Marchant and Antoine Vérard.

Eclipses luminarium by Cyprian Leowitz (1554)

Friday Inspiration: Cosmographics (Part 1: the Moon)

{left} Galileo's drawings of the moon from 1610  {right} The Moon published in Galileo's Sidereus nuncius, 1610

Johann Zahn Specula physico-mathematico-historica 1696

{left} An early photograph of the Moon, a daguerreotype taken by John W. Draper, March 26, 1840, in New York. {Right} First published photograph of the moon, 1840

Friday Inspiration: William Kentridge...

Everyone Their Own Projector / William Kentridge*

Kentridge plays with the palimpsest and with overlaying; he outlines hidden affinities. He superimposes pages torn from dictionaries, encyclopedias, cookbooks or science manuals, mixing up their languages; he crosses out, erases, covers images with Indian ink, blending different forms of knowledge, perception, and transmission. He engages in his own dialogue with images borrowed from art history through projections, retakes and bifurcations. Each image becomes a possibility, a path of exploration; each drawing, though independent, is part of a system of constant revision and referral in the sketched artistic self-portrait that the title of the book seems to suggest.

*I was recently lucky enough to acquire a copy of this limited edition book...
Artist book (orginals include ink and brush drawings and collages on books pages)
112 pages, facsimile edition of 1500 published in 2008 by Editions Captures, Valence France

Friday Inspiration: Le Corbusier...

{above and below} Le Corbusier: Architect of Books by Catherine de Smet, Lars Muller Publishers (2005)

Over his 5 decade career, Le Corbusier pioneered modern architecture and urban planning in the 20th century. But le Corbusier also worked as a book designer and author who meticulously designed and published over 40 books in his lifetime. He utilized print and publications to outline how he envisioned modern architecture in theory and reality.

Sheffield International Artist's Book Prize

My book Razzle Dazzle was selected to be included in the 2015 Sheffield International Artist's Book Prize. The biennial show features over 200 books from 45 different countries and is up through October 31st at Bank Street Arts in Sheffield, UK.

More info at http://artistsbookprize.co.uk/

The Sketchbook Project World Tour

"Destined to go down as one of the era's most astonishing global art projects, the Brooklyn Art Library's Sketchbook Project has, in less than a decade, amassed more than thirty thousand sketchbooks submitted by people of all ages and artistic abilities from more than 130 countries. Bursting with color, vivid imagery, and bouts of whimsy mixed with deeply intimate insights, the sketchbooks capture the texture of personal experience in a dizzying variety of illustrative styles and layouts that run the gamut from street portraits to stream-of-consciousness doodles, comics, and pop-ups. The Sketchbook Project World Tour presents the most compelling, surprising, and visually stunning examples from this one-of-a-kind artistic treasury."

Available today in bookstores and online!

Word + Image

Prints from the Tiny Little series and my accordion book This/That were selected to be included in Word + Text, the 2015 Small Works Salon at Chandler Gallery.

Find out more at http://www.maudmorgan.com/gallery/smallworks2015_call.htm...

Razzle Dazzle

A wandering accordion book inspired by "dazzle" camouflage used by the Royal Navy during World War I. The dizzying paintjob on warships was developed by Norman Wilkinson and British artist, Edward Wadsworth.

Two prints by Edward Wadsworth depicting the Liverpool Shipyards where the ships were painted (1918)

It is also sometimes called "razzle dazzle," it consisted of complex patterns of geometric shapes in contrasting colors, interrupting and intersecting each other. It was not meant to conceal the vessel, but rather make it much more difficult to estimate a target's range, speed and heading.


Razzle Dazzle
30 page wandering accordion structure with hardcovers
woodblocks on handmade paper, unique edition
3x3" page size

copyright Kate Castelli 2014 

Treasure hunting

I loved used bookstores. They are the main source of the paper and fragments I use in my work. I have a few favorite haunts in Cambridge and Boston and I visited one of them today. The Brattle Book Shop has been around since 1825, making it one of the oldest continuing operating bookshops in the whole country.

I bought a 1927 edition of Birds of Massachusetts and the New England States Vol. II and was startled to find all sorts of ephemera shoved in between the pages and covers. There were several scholarly journals and pamphlets, newspaper clippings, postcards, correspondence from 1930-1948, photographs of specimens and eggs, and a receipt for a passenger pigeon (!)

It was quite a find.

Beyond the Book VII

My accordion book "Ghost Chairs (Presence/Absence)" was selected to be part of...

Seventh Annual 
Beyond the Book: An Exhibition of the Book as Art


Oct. 19–Nov. 30, 2013
Brighton & Faneuil Branches, Boston Public Library

Opening Reception: Sat., Oct. 19, 11 am–1 pm


Sponsored by Unbound Visual Arts, Inc.,
Friends of the Faneuil Branch, Boston Public Library &
Friends of the Brighton Branch, Boston Public Library

Collaborative Circles

Caroline Board and I sat down one day in the printshop and cut up all sorts of proofs, ghost prints, and experimental prints to make this latest collaborative book. We completed it in one afternoon.

Untitled (Collaboration No. 6)
accordion with hard covers
woodblock and lithograph
5.5 x 36" opened

In addition to our collaborative books, we've printed our first collaborative edition! The venn diagram inspired print was created after we each carved one side of a circular woodblock. My side is printed in yellow ochre and Caroline's is black.

This print is currently on view at the Atrium Gallery at SMFA as part of the juried Print and Paper Show.


Untitled (K + C)
two color woodblock
edition of 8, 18x24" 


Our collaborative books and prints will be on view during our thesis show at Fourth Wall Project  April 16-27th.

End Page

End Page is an intersection of books, works on paper, and collections that explore poetic and formal juxtapositions in order to connect what cannot be connected.

End Page: Books & Works on Paper by Kate Castelli

MFA Thesis Exhibition at
Fourth Wall Project
132 Brookline Ave, Boston MA

April 16-27, 2013
Opening reception and artist's talk Friday April 19, 5-8pm

www.katecastelli.com
http://www.smfa.edu/mfa-thesis

Collaboration #5

Caroline Board and I just keep making books.

Untitled (Collaboration No. 5*)
accordion with hard covers
mixed media
3 x 24" opened

(*There was a collaboration #4, we just didn't like it.)

Friday Inspiration: The Boston Athenæum

The Boston Athenæum is one of those places that makes my soul happy. It is as if you stepped into the doorway of another century and into a universe governed by the sheer joy of books and learning. It is a magical place that can be found at 10 ½ Beacon Street.

This and That

This book began as a project to explore the formal relationships between random elements from my collection of ephemera. I had envisioned the format, made the accordion structure, and set the type all before I had selected the content. I had an empty book to fill. And that's where things changed.

As soon as I glued down the first pair of elements I realized the relationships and juxtapositions were anything but random. The fragments I had gathered had a history of their own that I couldn't ignore. I spent 10 straight hours in the studio creating the final sequence.

The result was poetic, heavily coded with visual data, and completely mysterious. Although there is not an intended narrative, one can be implied or created through various readings of the sequence. There are threads running throughout. The final book is over 12 feet long, but it can easily fit in your hands.



This/That 
accordion structure with hardcovers 
ephemera and typewriting
5x150” opened 
unique edition, 2012

copyright Kate Castelli 2012