Van Lier Learning Series Part One: Drypoint!

In 2010-11 the Center awarded three year-long scholarships to Kimberly McClure, Sarah McDermott, and Benjamin Reynaert as part of the Edward and Sally Van Lier Scholarship for Advanced Studies in Book Arts, funded by the New York Community Trust Van Lier Fund. This program is intended to support individuals who have demonstrated a commitment to the artistic endeavors in the book arts, and to provide opportunities to emerging artists committed to developing careers in the book arts field. This summer we’re offering a series of three workshops with our scholars-in-residence. Students may sign up for the entire series or just for one class, each taking place on a Saturday during the months of July and August.

The first one is coming up very soon:
Drypoint– Intaglio for the Book Minded
Drypoint is the most immediate of the Intaglio techniques, one that is well–suited for book imagery. It is a simple non-toxic process of drawing directly on a plate, using a scribe to create a burr that prints as a soft velvety line. The students will work on small copper plates. Because both sides of the copper plate can be used, each student should be able to work out a loose narrative of thought, the way one does through sketching. Students will learn the proper way to edition a print, and Kimberly will provide a printing guide for students who want to turn their prints into signatures of a book.
Coming up on July 9, Saturday, 10 am to 4pm with Kimberly McClure
Complete registration details are here

All images by Kimberly McClure.

Collection Spotlight: Shana Agid's "Hunger is the Best Sauce"

Shana Agid’s work Hunger is the Best Sauce: From Oranges by John McPhee is a beautiful Coptic bound book with covers of copper. Inside, one is presented with an unusual pagination and a bevy of replicated prints. While the guts of Agid’s book contain food for thought, the title of this work also holds multiple meanings and references.

“Hunger is the best sauce” is a quote from Cervantes’ Don Quixote. The intention of the statement is that when one is hungry, all food is more appetizing because of the urge to eat and the chemical reaction that is intensified by hunger. 

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The second part of the title refers to quotations pulled from John McPhee’s book Oranges, published in 1967.  Some quick background: McPhee’s book explains the taste and variation of physical attributes of the fruit.  McPhee describes the nuances of flavor, growing possibilities, and the fact that color does not dictate taste (that is: the outside is no reliable indication of what is within, an age old matching game of presentation versus actuality).  He also provides a historical history of the fruit.  When the connotation of McPhee's work and Cervantes' commentary come together, they provide a background for the idea of the mind's ability to influence expectations.  

The title, though an abbreviated summation of contents, implies that the contents of Agid's own work has an imperfect and varying exterior, while the inside reflects a full spectrum of styles, media, and textures. The Coptic binding hearkens back to at least the 2nd century AD, while the various prints and unusual pagination within, rather than adhering to the style of the cover, present a diversity of personal choice. The subject of prints range from studies of the face to the study of object integration.

While Agid's choices of prints are varied, they are anything but accidental, seeking to pay homage to a diversity that the works represent. The apparent traditionalism of this book makes the contents and title that much more inviting of close study.

To learn more about this work, please click here.

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-Rebecca Kish

Collection Spotlight: Juana Valdes' "Black Ship"

The Center for Book Arts prides itself in the unique and diverse works created by our Artists in Residence. Juana Valdes is no exception: her seemingly simple work [black ship] is rife with opportunities for interpretation and admiration of technical skill.

Juana Valdes was born in Cuba and arrived in the United States in 1971. She was raised in Miami and works in New York.  As an artist, she is interested in storytelling and the use of mass produced goods as an element in artistic expression.  Valdes works in a variety of media, including installation, sculpture and prints.

 [please click to enlarge]

Though Valdes’ letterpress print on linen is smaller than her photographic installations or sculptures--many of which utilize wall space and combine the elements of wood, water and light--her message is bold in ink upon linen.  Here she uses two elements of seemingly basic communication.  Her choice of linen (as well as its dimensions: 15 1/2 x 16 inches) reflects the shifting meanings suggested by a material that is stable to print upon, but known for its versatile uses.

Linen has a place in antiquity as well as a changing role in the modern market. While used for such sacred rites as burial and religious ceremony in Egypt, it was up until recently a decorative formality of men’s dress. As we move forward through the new century, the labor intensive production of linen sees more of a place amongst fine clothing, coveted for its cool and airy qualities on skin of those who can afford it.  We can assume that Valdes’ choice of linen as the medium in which to print upon was inspired not only by love for the fabric, but also by her knowledge of the historical value and journey that it has taken in our society.

The merging of the print of the ship and linen by letterpress is another relationship which Valdes is bringing together to suggest a journey and historical preservation.  The black ship symbolizes travel and industrialization, as well as slavery and globalization.  Transportation by sea and trade with far away lands dictated the new values of commodities, pinning humans and organic resources side by side.  The properties of ink and linen seem easy to appraise when considering the raw nature of their elements and origins, but the new relationship formed through the artist's planning and art of letterpress create a whole new message.

Though this specific work of Valdes' tells us so much about the merging of properties and ideas of personal and public voyage into a transitory space, her website offers insight by way of expanding upon this concept through installation and sculpture.

Please visit Juana Valdes’ website here.
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-Rebecca Kish

Collection Spotlight: Phillip Zimmermann's "Yellow Pages"

Phillip Zimmermann is an artist who uses the book form to express his concerns with mass media, politics, and the damaging effects of accrued worry that occurs as a result of a public forum.

He often manipulates photo images (1) within his work that lead the viewer to recognize the effects of media.  [Please read about his most recent effort- a book of images gathered as a prayer book for border injustice – here]

 [click to enlarge]

Zimmermann’s “Yellow Pages” mimics the utilitarian, information-heavy design of the phone book for which it is named.

The format of Yellow Pages appropriates the structured chaos of a phone book's graphic design and applies it in a manner that makes the viewer recognize cause and effect of form, font, and low-tech dot-matrix graphics.  Each verso presents a page as it occurs in a real phone book index, while each recto presents the artists manipulation of an image found amongst the listings.  These make use of clever cropping and enlarging, along with other alterations and manipulations.  The result is a blown up version of a highly trafficked ad utilizing cheap inks with the message: "For Years To Come You’ll Cherish These Informal Photos.."

Zimmermann finds a surprising expressivity within the limited format of the yellow pages, prompting the viewer to question the integrity and mechanics of production and how it is archived amongst us. Typically, the yellow pages are used to locate businesses which can provide a necessary service, and the massive listing is produced and replaced each year.  By cataloging the nature of this cycle, Zimmermann creates an area in which this process is archived and taken into consideration.  No longer is the process dismissed as a single occasion affair, but stored to be informative…long after the normal dictation of consumer approved expiration dates.  Zimmerman created this work in 1979; since that time, the Yellow Pages have taken on a new meaning, as a reference to pre-Internet communication. 

Zimmerman's book, an exploration of an everyday archive, has been archived (by us!) and kept as a work of fine art, subject to being appropriately recalled and glanced upon with fondness or indifference.

You can read more about Phillip Zimmermann’s other works and archived material here.

(1)

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-Rebecca Kish

Collection Spotlight: Donna Maria deCreeft's "Gourd Book with Asemic Writing."

One of the most appealing qualities of artist books is that they offer the possibility to recreate and innovate within a form that has been used for centuries. Structurally modifying a book into a work of art aims to recognize a book’s potential as an object of communication, while remaining true to the legacy of various craft traditions.  

Donna Maria deCreeft’s “Gourd Book with Asemic Writing” is an example of a work which remains true to the concept of the book as a structural container of words.  In fact, her book is primarily a container of that which can not be translated into the literal. The piece is a visual inquiry into the question of what it means to consider an object a book.

 [click to enlarge!]

Much can be gleaned from deCreeft’s artist statement in which she says (about books): “I think them of as containers for collections of ideas and images that  I’ve gleaned from literature, mythology, science, philosophy and psychology.” deCreeft also mentions the influence of her childhood memories on her desire to recreate the sensory experience of a book: “Embedded within the text were exquisite engravings of unimagined creatures and objects. Leafing through it was like entering a cabinet of wonders.” The visual representation, rather than the actual text, is the focus of her memories.  deCreeft also mentions the tissue thin paper of a repaired and outdated dictionary- even the smell of the rabbit-skin glue used in the binding.

The writing in deCreeft’s gourd book reflects the recalled memory impressions of a child.  The handwritten, calligraphic swoops and small fluid markings present only the pattern of communication.  Rather than text, it is an abstract representation of text.  It is apparent that this pattern, this universal language of marking, is deCreeft’s own communication with the viewer.

As adults accustomed to mass produced books, we are accustomed to the cheapest bindings and the blandest type as rule of concrete communication.  Here, we are offered a gateway back into an experience that prioritizes touch and vision over the interpretation of textual information.  

This post would not be complete without praise of deCreeft’s asemic writing.  As a mode of communication that is sandwiched between the abstract and legible, the interpretive nature of her glyphs is astounding in its Arabic construction of universality.  Our minds are trained to pull meaning from symbols, but even in relation to books- what we take away is often stored in recall that relies heavily on image association.  Our memory creation is uniquely personal.  Here, deCreeft is subtracting the overt meaning of comprehensive text and presenting a visual takeaway- a memory creation less interpretive regarding the concrete nature of contents and more based on what the memory wills into existence.

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-Rebecca Kish

Summer Art Study Tours: Color-From Mineral to Manuscript

The Center is excited to continue its series of Art Study Tours this summer. Come with us on a series of off-site, behind-the-scenes visits at various institutions, collections, and artists’ studios around the city. This summer series will focus on color and the uses and making of pigments. Consisting of 3 visits throughout the city this July and August, students may sign up for all three in the series or just for one class, each taking place on a Thursday afternoon. Here's what we have planned:


Thursday, July 28th, 3pm
Illuminating Fashion at the Morgan Library and Museum.

Visit this special exhibition and discover the uses of color in medieval manuscripts with an expert in the field, Karen Gorst. Drawn from the Morgan's collections, over fifty illuminated medieval and Renaissance manuscripts and early printed books are featured in the exhibition. Join us and discover the difference between the depictions of contemporary fashions and the actual colors used in clothing of the time period. Students will discuss from a historical perspective the process of making paints and dyes. The exhibition will be used as a backdrop for a discussion on the different artistic techniques employed to produce the color in medieval manuscripts and on fabric from the medieval period.

With Karen Gorst, Master Calligrapher and Illuminator


Thursday, August 4th, 3pm
Producing Pigments with Michael Price
Join us and visit the studio of Brooklyn artist Michael Price, an expert in the preparation and application of natural and mineral pigments as well as traditional Renaissance painting techniques. During this visit to his Dumbo studio, students will witness the magic of how crystals and rocks can become beautiful pigments and learn more about the Renaissance palette.
With Michael Price, Artist


Thursday August 11th, 3pm
Color and Conservation at the Met
Join us for a behind the scenes visit to the conservation lab of the Thomas J. Watson Library at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Learn about the role of color in the conservation of books and printed materials and the techniques used by conservators to match color in the materials they are working with.
With Mindell Dubansky, Preservation Librarian, Metropolitan Museum of Art


Course Fee: $180 for the series/$150 for members
Individual Session: $60 per session/$50 for members

Call us at 212-481-0295 or register through our website.

AND ALSO If you're interested in the topic and want to hear more about color and even make some of your own pigments to use and keep, we've also got a full-length workshop coming up in August with Karen Gorst: The Origins of Color, August 20-21. Find out more here. 

Collection Spotlight: Helen M. Brunner's "Primer: Ritual Elements (Book One)

One notable highlight from the Center's Fine Arts Collection is Helen M. Brunner’s Primer: Ritual Elements (Book One).

Brunner assembles an oddly symmetrical host of materials into a composition of a seemingly rough-edged D-I-Y style pamphlet binding. The nature of the text is cryptic, providing more of a visual context than a narrative.

 

One of Brunner’s pages contains a skepticism pertaining to media, stating:

“THESE NOTES ARE NOT TO BE

TRUSTED   PICTURES ARE NOT TO

BE TRUSTED   LANGUAGE

IS NOT TO BE TRUSTED”

creating a visual rhythm through repetitive text and torn, obscured images.

Here, Brunner characterizes all media as a biased and risky informer.  The implied message is our willingness to trust notes, pictures, and language can be treacherous.  And who could disagree?  The weight of Brunner’s message is not argued in a neatly formatted journal essay, but thrown across pages in a composition that deliberately avoids the conventions of informative communication.

 

The images also imply the replication of media into an undecipherable and cloudy state.  We can’t trust the shapes of the object to dictate meaning, just as we sometimes can’t rely on language to accurately describe a situation or to report fact.

In Primer: Ritual Elements (Book One), Brunner plays with the conventions of titling.  A primer is a very basic guide, a stepping stone to a larger interpretation of the world. Here, we find the opposite of what we’d expect. The guide is neither instructional nor intended as an introduction to a topic, but a personal conjecture on account of the artist.  Brunner implies that the ritualistic reading of images and texts on the basis of trust is the key to interpretation and the touching stone for a “book two.”  While warning us that pictures and text cannot be trusted, she asks us to trust her: to trust her work, her ethic, and her method of compilation and construction.  

To read more about this work: Click here.

-Rebecca Kish

Call for entries: Fine Press Publishing Seminar for Emerging Writers

The new call for entries for the next session of our ongoing Fine Press Publishing Seminar for Emerging Writers is posted. This five day intensive hands-on workshop introduces writers to the basics of hand typesetting and letterpress printing. Students set their work in type and print and share an edition of mini-broadsides with the group, while learning about the history and flexibility of the medium. Visiting artists and publishers come in to speak to the group about their own work, their methods of production and their ways of distributing their books to an audience.

All of this is tuition-free for those who are accepted. We've been running this program since 2003 and we're very proud of the work that's come out of it. Students are encouraged to start their own press, and to incorporate handmade elements in the works they produce.


The next section of this seminar is scheduled for Wednesday through Sunday, September 14-18 from 10 am to 4pm. This workshop is most suitable for those with little to no previous letterpress experience.Writers from culturally diverse backgrounds are especially encouraged to apply.




The complete guidelines are available now on our website under Opportunities: here.
Application postmark deadline for this coming session is July 15, 2011.

Collection Spotlight: Shervone Neckles' "A Soldier's Story"

Shervone Neckles is the creator of A Soldier’s Story, a double accordion foldout book residing in our Fine Arts Collection.

Borrowed from the palette of army fatigues, a simple spread of muddied, low chroma greens play host to a digitally printed close-up of a soldier’s face.  Upon unfolding the accordions, replications of soldiers spill into a redundancy of dissectible body parts.  Each leaf is sliced into quadrants. This sectioning of the soldier can be read as a reference to the loss of limbs, while the dotted lines which form perimeters around each soldier are reminiscent of the paper dolls common in childhood role-playing games.

Also significant is Neckles' decision to place a computer cursor over the image of a soldier.  This detail opens up a wide variety of interpretations that comment on media, technology, game play, and selection. Can a soldier be as simple as a copy and paste line of coding?  Perhaps the marker is a comment on the computerization and rapidly advancing technical ability that our society has entered, while remaining true to our history of violence and opposition.   

 [click to enlarge]

Present everywhere is Neckles’ concern for loss of life that comes inevitably with war.  The reference to paper dolls fosters the childlike conception of how troops are moved and played by a force beyond their control.  Because the soldiers lack individual identifying features, Neckles writes the story the same way each time.  The Soldier’s Story is one of no individuation, just movable, dispensable, players.

Neckles tries to counteract this in her practices as an educator and artist.  She prides herself on being involved in youth advocacy through the interactive application of arts.  By bringing multiple means of expression to youth, Neckles gives a voice to at-risk communities, raising awareness of value systems and contradictions.  A Soldiers Story was created during a time of military action (2007), but will remain a physical reminder and reference to a universal hurt. 

For more about Shervone Neckles, click here.

For our listing of this work, click here.

Collection Spotlight: Gary Richman's "Doctor Dogwit’s Inventory of Provisional Alignments."

Gary Richman’s work tends to be dark and socially critical, an assemblage of media that illustrates the failure of communication.  In “Doctor Dogwit’s Inventory of Provisional Alignments,” Richman uses photos, diagrams, text, and ephemera to create interpretive compositions.

One interesting aspect is Richman’s placement of works on the page. Displayed on the left page are images and hand-drawn media. On the right page are text blocks that narrate the images in order from left to right. The formulaic acknowledgment of images-on-the-left and text-on-the-right reminds one of storybooks or explanatory illustrations. One must conclude that the narrative bits were composed either after (or simultaneously) with the composition of images, a direct negation of the idea of an illustrated story.

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As for content, the collective juxtaposition of dogs and humans, along with the finished product of a craft project (birdhouse) suggest an opposition of the natural versus the constructed. There seems to be a thread of "wellness" as related to pleasure seeking, contrasted to the manually constructed “correctors."  Arts and crafts, as pleasurable and leisurely activity, are in contrast with the clinical and expository medical photo of one braced through modern medicine and innovation. There is modernity in the steel components of a support structure that is focused on stabilizing the human body.

 [click to enlarge]

Richman’s text has an anecdotal quality. Characters are named and stated mater-of-factly, and developments are as short and specific as the corresponding photos, drawings, and diagrams. There is an aspect of Americana in the boldness of dictation. The very direct sentences suggest an adult version of “Spot” or "Dick and Jane" books. The visual vocabulary informs the nuances of the characters in these 6 line blocks of text.

See our archival listing of this work here.

See another work of Gary Richman’s here for comparison and contrast.

-Rebecca Kish

Summer letterpress classes at the Center

Have you always been meaning to learn to set type? To print something letterpress? To play with wood type? One of the most popular classes on our schedule is consistently Letterpress I. These courses provide the building blocks for studies in Letterpress Printing and are great for everyone from the serious student to those interested in getting their feet wet. This summer we have two sections coming up, one on Tuesday nights starting July 5th and another for a week during the day in August, the 8th through the 12th. Students will learn the essentials of good presswork including inking, imposition, and impression and move on to discuss typefaces, paper, incorporating illustrations and adding color. You will develop your own small projects such as broadsides or cards. Bring words and ideas to class and be ready to roll up your sleeves!

Letterpress I is a prerequisite for renting in the printshop, so if you get hooked on printing you can continue on after the class is over and work on your own projects.

There's still availability in both sections; check out the registration details here and sign up for a class this summer.

Panorama Concertina

Join us for a one-day immersion in the panorama concertina! Alice Austin will be joining us on Saturday June 18th for a workshop  on this intriguing structure.

A panorama is any wide-angle view or representation of a physical space, whether in painting, drawing, photography, film/video or a three-dimensional model (such as a book). In the mid-19th century, panoramic paintings and models became a very popular way to represent landscapes and historical events.This particular book structure allows for the depiction of space and movement over a series of panels, thus the name.

The panorama concertina, designed by Hedi Kyle, is an accordion book with a series of floating panels. Alice will take her students through a series of quick writing exercises to generate some ideas; your books will be able to follow a short narrative. The center of each panel is cut and folded to allow for movement. Starting with a relief printed surface, artwork for the panels can be made in class using mylar stencils or rubber stamps, or can be photos, drawings or prints that you bring with you.

Completer registration info is here.

Collection Spotlight: Bruce McLean's "Retrospective: King for a Day and 999 other pieces..."

Bruce McLean is a Scottish performance artist./ painter who brings depth to public actions while simultaneously mocking the pretensions of the art world. Given a one man show at the age of 27, McLean has not ceased production in the public eye since, delivering a hodge podge of projects that contain brilliant dark strokes amidst a flailing humor. Whether using his body to express the limits of gallery dimensions and the works of his predecessors and professors, or applying the bold juxtaposition of high chroma shapes to canvas, McLean worships mood and the ability to create a previously unnoticed dimension.

In “King for a Day and 999 Other Pieces” McLean puts forth a retrospective of his pieces, titling all of them. It is important to recognize McLean’s humor in something that is usually taken so seriously. A retrospective signals transition and accomplishment. The word itself requires to search the archives of one’s production and inspect components as if reappraising or qualifying. However, because of the book's release date in 1972 and the accompanying photos of McLean playing jester as a performance artist, mocking his allotted space and attention, we are aware of the retrospective as the beginning of a long career.

The seal on “King for a Day and 999 Other Pieces” lends a casual tone to an initial encounter. (On our copy, it is, of course, broken.) It still reads: “"Another Major Breakthrough Piece / Note Casual...”

The interior of the book is filled with stills of McLean’s performance art, coupled with a list of titles that are presumed to accompany actions/movement.

Examples:

32 Disposable Piece

33 Throwaway Piece

50 Song, joke and dance piece

These titles suggest free association and spontaneity, as opposed to maddening deliberation. The titles inform gently and comprehensibly. Dumbed down? More like an assertion of the necessity of transparent titling.

Within the binding of the book is a white piece of string along with a needle.  A drawing upon a piece of notebook paper has also been inserted into the book. Our copy contains a sheet with straight edge lines upon a grid, with shaded areas and numbers that connote measurements or ranges. 

The design and informal weight of the content makes this one of our favorite books at The Center for Book Arts! Click here for more information.

(Further reading on Bruce McLean.)

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Rebecca Kish

Collection Spotlight: Masumi Shibata's "UED"

In our archives (and soon to be on display!) is Masumi Shibata’s “UED.” “UED” stands for Uncertain English Dictionary. Shibata’s creative vision not only incorporates design and clean and sturdy case bound technique, but the content is crucial in its necessity to form a connection through a universal symptom of disconnect.

The "UED" is a gathering of cultural diversifications of the English language and seeks to inform the reader of a growing acceptance of an umbrella of linguistic interpretations- a culture not created from the deviation of one root, but a celebration of differences. Gathered and prepared for a new articulation, the UED provides space in which to practice writing out new understandings, as well as pronunciation of words. 

The Uncertain English Dictionary varies from a standard index in that it is not the consensus of a consortium of authorities, but the expressed opinion of one individual. Shibata makes no excuses for this primary authority, instead seeming to offer a window into his language, with hopes that the wide reach of non-verbal inferences will be apparent to the viewer. Below the title is both the assertion of Masumi Shibata as Editor in Chief and the logo of MasumiEducational, the branding under which Shibata’s other efforts fall.

[click to enlarge!]

The graphic design component is also significant. Shibata uses the clean and non-threatening efficiency of Helvetica, yet skews the writing by clean cutting it in half and re-assembling stalks of stems, bowls, arms and legs. The result is a hard to identify combination of fonted flurry, negating the simplicity and asserting the disconnect that the viewer/reader must work through to extract meaning. The definition, however, is expressed in clear and simple language. Shibata may be playing with the role of graphics in our interpretation of language, or merely leading us through a process that shows us the patience of decoding symbols, leading us through mental exercise. 

Read more about the components of Masumi Shibata’s “UED” here.

-Rebecca Kish

Collection Spotlight: Marian St. Laurent's "Mind Games for 2: An Adult Activity Book"

When a book's design informs its contents (and vice versa), a beautiful balance is struck for the viewer (and in this case, participant!)

According to Marian St. Laurent, “Mind Games for 2: An Adult Activity Book” was inspired by  “Andy Warhol coloring books and my mother.” While we have no reference for the maternal influence over St. Laurent’s vision, we can easily draw parallels between the bold composition of type and the inviting outlines and ease of interaction of Warhol’s outlines.

St. Laurent’s outlines are altogether a participatory venture. The book is designed to be used as a tool for adult interaction, yielding new or significantly reinforcing information about each partner (or opponent). The table of contents page includes the warning: “Using lies of manipulation without the consent of your game partner at this stage will undermine trust and damage the end result of your work together. Proceed with caution or you could end up with a life long enemy.”

While the books design is reminiscent of games played in an atmosphere of simplicity and intimate fun, but the text in preface of each game is serious and cautionary. The game formatting is in the form of a diagram, or chart. Input leads to analysis, and the flow of shapes implies the ramifications of question and answer.  Basic shapes, often used to teach children simple mathematics and interactive play technique, are applied on an adult level. The time spent with the game is meant to yield a result, bringing us from infancy of knowledge to a maturity of interaction and conclusion.

St. Laurent tells us that the book is for adults. Adult activities bring numerous thoughts to mind, including the fact that a certain level of brainpower is required to achieve a result that is separate from an elementary understanding of the world and its properties. The intimacy and honesty encouraged by the game provides the option of a bridge to sexual understanding. 

The most notable aspect of this book upon initial evaluation is its sense of structure, rules, and formula.  The game is meant to last from 10 minutes to whenever both parties feel they have reached a conclusion (an arguably infinite amount of input is suggested.) Children are known for their distorted sense of time, as they play to learn and learn to play.  Paradoxically, timed games can be so absorbing that participants lose their awareness of the passage of time, even in adulthood.

The title is a facet of this work that informs both the whimsical construction and frighteningly frank nature of the game's objective to the viewer/participant. The phrase “mind games” stems from a pop psych term that relies heavily on neurotic input and selfish results. “Mind games” also describe a puzzle or brain teaser that requires undivided attention and investment of skills. The implication of a game yielding the result of a winner and a loser, along with the suggestion that the mind’s strength is responsible for swaying outcome, is a daunting challenge that makes the warning of lies falsifying an “end result” a concept strictly for adults.

St. Laurent’s use of colorforms aside, the weighty nature of the instructional material and engaged "play" is completely reliant on the motives of the participants and the desired outcome. Possible outcomes range from irreparable disagreement to new understandings, sexual intimacy, or newly made bonds between almost perfect strangers.

Please click here for more details on this piece.

-Rebecca Kish