Artist Member – Co-founder, Past President
Night Walk II, 2013
Unique accordion book, Arches 300lb paper, inks, acrylics, encaustics, and wood panel
Text of poem Night Walk II, by Lucile Burt
10cm w (closed), 1.71m w (open) x 12.5cm h
Donald Trump and the Bald Eagle: A Conversation in Our Nation’s Capitol, 2016
Unique accordion book, paper and book board
11.9cm h, 13.65cm l (closed), 8.19m l (open)
Slivers of Red, Yellow, and Blue, 2019
Unique accordion book, cyanotype and watercolor on paper
9.5cm h, 4.5cm w (closed), 1.98m w (open)
Marie Canaves
BIO
Marie Canaves was born in Havana, Cuba. She and her family left the island in 1961, fleeing the Communist Revolution. She was raised in Miami, Florida, where she earned a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Painting from Florida International University and studied extensively with Roberto Martinez, a master draughtsman/painter. She served as the McDermott Graduate Intern at the Dallas Museum of Art, and earned a Masters of Art in Art History from Southern Methodist University in Dallas. Her area of study was modern European and Mexican art. Her thesis topic was the self-portraits of Frida Kahlo.
Upon finishing her graduate work, Ms. Canaves served as Curator of Education at the Bass Museum of Art in Miami Beach. Subsequently, she relocated to Cape Cod. She founded and served as the first Director/Curator of the only academic art gallery on the Cape, the Higgins Art Gallery at Cape Cod Community College. Until her recent retirement, she served as Professor of Art History, Art, and Humanities at Cape Cod Community College.
Ms. Canaves has traveled throughout Europe and has spent a considerable amount of time in Italy, studying the drawings and paintings of the Old Masters. She has written and delivered numerous papers at national conferences, and at other venues such as Cape Cod Museum of Art and the Provincetown Art Association. She has participated in exhibitions on the Cape at the Higgins Art Gallery, Gallery at Slough Road, Cape Cod Museum of Art, and at the Cape Cod Cultural Center. She now lives in Boston where she co-founded and is President of New England Book Artists (NEBA), an organization of book artists and bibliophiles, and where she devotes most of her time to her artwork.
ARTIST’S STATEMENT
My artistic world was radically and permanently altered by a course, Hand-Made Books and Paper-Making, that I took some years ago. Prior to this, I had happily devoted my energies to drawing and painting. But this class changed all of that and introduced me to a far wider range of possibilities than anything I had previously imagined.
During this same period, two unusual and unexpected encounters reinforced the new direction my art would take. I had begun working on a series for which I needed to learn how to make volvelles. Through my research, I came across the work of Ramon Llull, a 14th century Spanish mystic, philosopher, and polymath. As it turns out, it was Llull who introduced the volvelle to Europe in the 13th century. My research also happened to coincide with the 700th anniversary of his passing; his life and work were being celebrated worldwide. These two experiences proved to be personally relevant and significant, when I learned Llull was one of my ancestors. I interpreted these serendipitous and synchronous events as a sign that I was headed in the right direction, and I haven’t looked back since.
I have always held a deep love of visual art as well as of the written word, and I am equally comfortable expressing myself in both modalities. This is probably the main reason why I am so attracted to hand-made artist books. They provide me with virtually endless possibilities to combine my love of image and my passion for books and story-telling. And while I honor and cherish the traditional book-making methods of the past, I likewise admire and respect contemporary inventiveness. Living in the midst of a pandemic, along with its attendant social distancing, a book’s intrinsic potential for physical interaction coupled with its intimacy of scale, is something I cherish. And being able to make as well as handle books, is one of the great pleasures of my life.