New England Book Artists is pleased to share the book arts of NEBA Artist Member, Rebekah Lord Gardiner as June’s Featured Member. Her mixed media book arts are personal and connected with an elegant balance – restricted color palettes, minimal text and hand-stitched elements.
Rebekah Lord Gardiner graduated from the University of the Arts with a BFA in printmaking and from the North Bennet Street School with a certificate in bookbinding. Her appreciation of printmaking and books began on a trip to Colonial Williamsburg when she was 9, so being able to study both those things as an adult was like winning the lottery. When Rebekah is not incorporating her prints into books, she is co-owner of Shepherd & Maudsleigh Studio in West Newton, MA. The studio is a member community of printmakers and artists who have access to screen printing, etching, monotype and relief printing.
Rebekah shared, “Sculptural, intimate, and interactive: these are the words that come to mind when I think about the book as an art form. Unlike in my prints and drawings, I use a particular book structure to guide the viewer’s experience by playing with the inside/outside relationship as well as the tempo of the story. Having a book in your hand and turning the pages makes for an intimate sculptural experience that one does not have with flat paper hanging on a wall. I use prints, drawings, sculpture, installation and artist books to explore connections through the themes of distance, the intangible and the elusive. The pauses, the unspoken, the empty moments, the interstices: these are what connect the volumes and the masses together as they create a whole. The fields of biology, physics, and architecture as well as landscape architecture are my starting points to explore relationships between people, places and history. I look at my family history to make the work personal and hope it resonates universally with the viewer.”
Circle and Square Go on a Journey, 2014
This book is a quarter red leather tightback with black paste paper covers. The text is the story of Circle and Square on their journey together created using mixed media and collage as well as a hole punch. Circle and Square was juried by Meg White into the Concord Art Association’s 2014 Roddy competition.
She says, “the goal was to tell a visual narrative after I had heard a talk given by the photographer Jeff Wall, who said he simplified his compositions down to basic shapes. I interpreted that to mean using only circles and squares to tell a story. I thought about the different ways I could do that: either by drawing and/or incorporating collage. This structure started out as a model of a binding I learned at the North Bennet Street School where I earned a certificate in bookbinding. Because of it’s flexible spine I thought it made for a good text block for drawing. Typically, I make my text blocks before binding them, and this was unusual for me to create the text after binding the book.”
Circle Has A Dream, 2015
Drawing cut into pieces to create 2 signatures sewn into a 2-pamphlet structure.
The covers fold out to become their own double page spreads, and two pages from each signature are sewn together on the fore edge. After sewing the book together, more drawings and collage work was incorporated, as well as a handwritten quote by David Ireland as the text.
Previous to her bookbinding life, Rebekah had worked as a textile printer at the Fabric Workshop in Philadelphia. One of the artists she assisted was David Ireland, and she quotes:
“You have to understand that you can only do something for the culture by giving it what it can’t swallow. When you give it what it can swallow, then you are only trying to get approval for yourself, you’re doing nothing for the culture.”
Continuing her story with Circle, Rebekah created a fantastical environment, like in a dream and decided Ireland’s quote was appropriate.
Balance Due
Screenprinted yupo covers and exposed sewing on yupo tapes.
The textblock is both screenprinted and hand-drawn with ink.
This book comes from a new body of work that looks at history and examines the effects of previous actions and their results today. Specifically, she is looking at the shipbuilding history of Newburyport, MA and it’s part in the trades between the US, the far east and India. The chosen color palette reflects the colors found in the dyes used in the textiles, as well as the textiles themselves, such as indigo and the soft yellow/ochre of hemp.