Steven Ferlauto and Jeffrey W. Morin, Sailor Boy Press
Stevens Point, Wisconsin
Sacred Space
Handmade paper by Caren Heft and Brian Borchardt
Letterpress, mixed media construction
Edition of 35, 2002
The laws of Nature are written in the language of mathematics...the symbols are triangles, circles, and other geometric figures, without whose help it is impossible to comprehend a single word.–Galileo Galilei

In typography, as in architecture, the artist has the ability to create sacred spaces.

Emily K. Larned
Red Charming
Brooklyn, New York
Syntax Machine
Letterpress, bound in paper and metal
Edition of 35, 2001
Streaming text in this book begins with machinery and progresses to art, language, knowledge, and finally to DNA and infinity.

Matter and meaning is comprised of nothing but things, and the syntax of things.

Carol Barton
Nexus Press
Atlanta, Georgia
Instructions for Assembly
Printed pages, engineered paper
Edition of 600
1993
Subtitled Three How-To Projects that will Improve Your Life. To complete the projects, turn the pages; through the marvels of paper engineering, each page builds upon the page that precedes it, until each constructed “project” is revealed in its completed state.

Dieter Roth
Switzerland
2 Books
from Dieter Roth: Collected Works, volume 8
Facsimile by Edition Hansjörg Mayer
Edition of 1000
1976
These two books are reconstructions of Variants A and B of portfolios Roth published between 1958 and 1961. Thanks to their unbound structure, the viewer may construct countless variations of the imagery.

David Lance Goines
David R. Godine, Publisher
Boston, Massachusetts
A Constructed Roman Alphabet
Letterpress
1982
It’s easy to take language for granted. But look closely at the letters you write and you’ll realize that each is a construction. The type (fonts) we use in books and on computers evolved from the lettering done by stone cutters, centuries ago. This book, in fact, is printed letterpress using Bembo metal types, a font first used by the prolific Renaissance printer Aldus Manutius in 1495. The original Bembo types were cut by the great letter designer Francesco Griffo of Bologna, Italy... who most likely knew a thing or two about carving letters in stone.

Lynne Avadenka
Land Marks Press
Huntington Woods, Michigan
The Uncommon Perspective of M.E.J. Colter
Letterpress, pulp painting, handmade paper
Edition of 100
1992
This book examines gender roles while celebrating the work of architect Mary Elizabeth Jane Colter, who designed most of the buildings at Grand Canyon National Park. Very little is known about Colter– a fact that puzzles the artist, who asks, “Why would it be so difficult to learn about this woman? When her buildings... are an inseparable part of a visitor’s experience of the Grand Canyon, why is her name nowhere to be found?” She follows these questions with white space on the page (a pause?), and then:
“Quick, name a woman architect.”

Buzz Spector
Grassfield Press
Miami Beach, Florida
Untitled (for Joseph Cornell)
Handmade cedar box by Luis Baltar
Postcards, wax, ink, gesso, Plexiglas, cedar box,
book (by Dickran Tashjian)
Edition of 30
1992
Joseph Cornell was an enigmatic twentieth century American artist known for his box constructions. In this homage, Spector has created a construction in Cornell’s style. The postcards of far-away places pay tribute to Cornell as an “Enchanted Wanderer,” while the blue Plexiglas covering the collage gives the work the deep blue tone that pervades many of Cornell’s boxes. Each construction in the edition is unique and offers a subtle commentary on the contents of the book that it holds.

Kazuko Watanabe
The Library Fellows of the National Museum
of Women in the Arts
Washington, DC
The Diary of a Sparrow
Letterpress and intaglio
Edition of 125
1999
The eight stories in this book are small excerpts from the journals written by the artist’s grandfather, who lived in a village in Japan. His thoughts in each selected passage focus on a technological or social event that profoundly altered his world. The artist states: The book is bound so parts can be unfolded and all can be stood up on a table like a small house, and one can gaze into it as a child gazes at a spinning globe and discovers new worlds.

Béatrice Coron and Gaëlle Pelachaud
Figures of Thoughts/Formes de Pensées
Embossed and cut paper, ink
Edition of 20
undated
This book explores idioms in French and English relating to the physical structures and spaces that each artist has created within it.

Paul Johnson
Manchester, United Kingdom
Is this the House in a Tree I Saw so Clearly
as a Child?
Dyed and cut engineered paper
One of a kind,
undated
Movable books, especially structures that pop-up as this one does, are obvious constructions. Book artists working in this format are known as Paper Engineers.

J. Meejin Yoon
Printed Matter, Inc.
New York, New York
Absence
Die cut board
2003
Destruction as the opposite of Construction. Loss is the theme of this book about the attack on the World Trade Center. There is no text to be found in these powerful pages: each page holds simply the negative space of what is no longer there–from the footprint of the buildings to the top of the broadcast tower.

Red Grooms, illustrator
Construction: The Museum of Modern Art
Calendar 1983
Designed by Melissa Feldman
1982

Donald Glaister
Cleveland, Ohio
Brooklyn Bridge: A Love Song
Silkscreen, acrylics, mixed media collage on
aluminum; bound in leather and aluminum
Edition of 60,
2002
Glaister’s book alternates views of the famous bridge with detailed abstracts of the bridge’s construction: elements of stone, cable, metal, color.

The MIT Press
More About 2 Squares
(With a facsimile reproduction of About 2 Squares
in 6 Constructions by El Lissitzky, 1922)
Letterpress, offset lithography
1991
El Lissitzky was part of the Russian Constructivism movement in art of the early twentieth century. Constructivism was fostered by the political success of the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917, and is a movement closely identified with the utopian ideals of Communist ideology and industrial progress. Constructivists saw themselves not as artists but as engineers and designers. The category of art itself, according to their manifesto, would be eliminated and replaced with utilitarian products. Lissitzky created typographic constructions based in these ideals. Railing writes about Lissitzky’s work: As constructions, the images are a process––and a bridge–– ... into the sensation of the infinite.

David Macauley
Mosque
Houghton Mifflin Company
2003
Macauley is the author and illustrator of an entire series of children’s books that explain, with great detail, the process of construction. Other books in the series include Cathedral, Castle, City, and Pyramid.