We’re excited to present New England Book Artists’ Featured Member, Renate Klein.
Her thoughtful and striking book arts combine printmaking, paper-making, pulp-painting and story-telling in unique or small edition artist’s books. With a background as a psychologist and in the social sciences as a teacher at University of Maine, her book designs merge personal and historical narratives, as well as mixed media techniques and approaches. We asked her NEBA’s favorite question, ‘Why the book?’
“My first experience with making artist books was an astonishing workshop at Haystack Mountain School of Crafts, on the coast of Maine. The workshop was co-taught by the late Beck Whitehead, paper-maker at Southwest School of Art, and the author Audrey Niffenegger, Columbia College Chicago. We made paper, pulp-painted, developed stories and poems and put everything together in a book. For me, it was a revelation. From this workshop came the book, Anka falls asleep on the job.
I love the book as artistic medium because it does not reveal its content all at once and because it speaks to all the senses. It relates to the viewer in different states: Open or closed; in movement when pages are turned. It can take up little or much space, disappearing on the shelf when closed or dominating the room at full extension. I love the book for its multi-sensory qualities: It engages vision, touch, smell, hearing, and movement; it is interactive. The page sequence creates rhythm and flow, or rupture. The paper can be soft, slick, hard, or wooly. Each paper makes its own sound when moved, it swishes, crackles, or sighs. The viewer decides how to move through the book, where to rush and where to linger, what to skip and what to go back to.”
Anka falls asleep on the job
Handmade, pulp-painted paper created at a book arts/paper-making/story-telling workshop with the late Beck Whitehead and Audrey Niffenegger at Haystack Mountain School of Crafts, Maine. Story of a wild girl who forecasts the weather for a village but falls asleep after eating too much egg custard and misses an oncoming storm. Accordion binding. On the last page, a pocket that contains a lose sheet of hand-made paper printed with the text of the story.
Living off the Land
Handmade, pulp-painted paper created at the Paper studio of John Gerard, Rheinbach, Germany. Original etchings made at the University of Maine art department. Five signatures, each representing a chapter, chapter headings printed on glassine. Long-stitch binding.
This is part of a project inspired by C.V.Wedgwood’s book on the 30-years war, a series of military campaigns in central Europe in the first half of the 17th century. At the time, warfare took place mostly during the summer, when farmers would plant, tend, and harvest their fields. Pay for mercenaries was rare and plundering and destruction of fields and villages common. The spoils included food, land, goods, and women. Common harvest tools were scythes and sickles; mercenaries still used halberds. Thus, blades were integral to both constructive and destructive purposes. The historical roots of etching as an artistic medium lie in the metal etching techniques used to decorate weapons and armor with heraldry and floral motives. In a nod to that tradition but a refusal to adorn weapons of destruction, I etched copper plates in the shape of harvest tools with imagery of grains and grapes to honor those who do the mundane work that keeps societies afloat.
The year 1618
Handmade, pulp-painted paper created at the Paper studio of John Gerard, Rheinbach, Germany. Original etchings made at the University of Maine art department. Hand-printed text. Long-stitch binding.
This book also engages with the 30 years war. Like Living off the Land, it explores the tension between warfare and peasants’ work, between the work of livelihood and the work of destruction. This book is shorter and does not include chapter headings on glassine. Instead, across some of the pages are printed the words from the first paragraph of Wedgwood’s book, which encapsulates in a nutshell the tension and tragedy of the war.
Onward
Handmade, pulp-painted paper created at the Paper studio of John Gerard, Rheinbach, Germany. Accordion and phamplet binding.
This book explores the need to keep going in life, through good times and bad. It is inspired by Kenah Cusanit’s poem “my favorite line”. German book artist Uta Schneider introduced Renate to the poem, and in her workshops she developed the idea for the book and its final form. The poem suggests images of nature, mountains, rock and foliage, and the book represents an imaginary hike through the mountains. It consists of six chapters – Approach, Ascent, Crossroads, Vista, Gorge, Horizon – that are not bound together but sit loosely in a sleeve. The chapters combine accordion folds and pamphlet stitch and can be turned, set upright, and pulled apart.
Renate on NEBA’s Show & Tell – October 2021
Renate’s NEBA member listing