Details — Click to read
Cloth covered boards w/ plexi slipcase. 11 x 7 in.
32 pp. Published Granary Books, New York. Edition: 50. Signeirt
Oaths? Questions? was published by Granary Books in early 2009. Ruth Lingen, in New York, printed the images on Somerset Book. The typographic layout, by Marjorie Welish and James Siena, was printed letterpress by Art Larson at Horton Tank Graphics in Hadley, Massachusetts. Oaths? Questions? was bound in printed cloth over boards. The binding structure was designed by Daniel E. Kelm and Kylin Lee at the Wide Awake Garage in Easthampton, Massachusetts and produced by Kylin Lee at the Blue Eyed Cicada Studio also in Easthampton. Steve Clay, Philip Gallo, and Judy Tobar provided additional assistance.
Published 2009;; 32 pp.,. cloth over boards with Plexiglas slipcase; edition, 50; $6,000
“With Oaths? Questions? the object is not so much a book as the functions of seeing and reading distributed back and forth across pages. From the outset, the conception was that transparent pages interleaved with text to be read as legible, if unintelligible, against the opaque pages of art—unintelligible, that is to say, until the reader turns the page in the course of handling the book.
“With James Siena as my cohort in visual/verbal mischief, the interplay in words and images created is decidedly enriched in the exchange with him whose similarly tactical head-space differs from mine in its moves.” – Marjorie Welish
Conceived by Marjorie Welish, Oaths? Questions? constructs an object of alternating opaque and transparent pages such that turning the pages produces maximal interaction between lexical and graphical registers. Here is how: where text appears in reverse, the words now appear as graphical elements to be seen; where dark colors occlude the words in overlay, a kind of concrete poem remains to be read; where the size of font and visual mark merge, pixilation is the result. Hence, turning the pages to read Oaths? Questions? is eventful.
