Always and Everywhere:

With a visit to my studio.

2007 Artists' Book Installations
Kate Kern
Visual Artist

Always and Everywhere exhibition detail – March/April 2007 Springfield Museum of Art, Springfield, Ohio
Front: Red Animals – ink, gesso and paste paper on printed matter, red thread, acrylic circles, cardboard tubes, wooden stool.
On Wall: For You Yet Give, Thy Kingdom Come and Hath and Whom - drawing ink over graphite on paper - photo: Debbie Brod.

Red Animals 60 x 32” (diameter) Ink, gesso and paste paper on printed matter, red cotton thread, cardboard tubes, acrylic and glass circles, two wooden stools 2007 (Note: includes two structures) Photo by Debbie Brod

Red Animals – detail photo by Debbie Brod

Hambone's Lament – Ink over gesso on paper, inkjet on cotton, florist wire
Book on wall mounted pedestal- inkjet pages with foil stamped cover, spiral binding.
Dimensions shown – approximately 12' H x 24' W x 15”D 2007
Photo by Debbie Brod

HAMBONE'S LAMENT

Building on the traditional opening verse of the African American
blues lyrics Hambone Hambone , Hambone's Lament is a cry of grief from
the perspective of a universal parent over all sons and daughters whose blood
is spilt in the name of war.

Hambone's Lament is an installation that includes an artists' book with the same title.
The 6 ½  x 14”, 27 page, black spiral bound, artists' book of text features a white foil stamped title on a black cover.

A description of the installation, with color images, is included.

 

Sample of text:

Hambone Hambone
Where you been?
Around the world
And I'm going again.

Hambone Hambone,
What did you see?
I saw the river
and the deep blue sea.

Found a place
by the side of the road,
Good things to eat
and water by the door.

My belly starts to swell,
people come around,
tell me:

“Do not smoke.
Do not drink.
Take these pills
(your iron is low).
Watch your weight
(gradual gain is best).”

Hambone's Lament Cover detail of artists' book Dimensions: 14 x 6 x .5” Open edition 2007

The following images are of See and Hear , as shown at the Weston Art Gallery,
650 Walnut Street, Cincinnati, Ohio from March 30 through June 8, 2007
as part of The Essence of a Thing exhibition.

See and Hear includes a projected drawing , two artists' books on wall selves and two chairs.
The text in the two books is selected from Henry David Thoreau's 1858 journal.
See contains statements beginning with “I see” or “See”.
Hear contains statements beginning with “I hear” or “hear”. Dimensions are variable.

Gallery visitors are invited to sit in the darkened space and read each of the books.
The gallery built a temporary wall to house this installation.
Artist provided a laptop to run the image to the digital projector.

Photos by Tony Walsh for the Weston Gallery.

2/14/1858
I see the ice, three inches thick, heaved up tentwise eighteen inches or more in height, near the shore…

2/18/1858
Far from here, I see the surface of weeds and mud lifted up in like manner where there is no canon or rill, but a puddle.

2/24/1858
I see at Minot Pratt's., rhodora in bloom, in a pitcher with water andromeda .

2/24/1858
I see quite a number of emperor moth cocoons attached to this shrub, some hung round with a loose mass of leaves as big as my two fists.

2/24/1858
…I see barberry bushes three inches in diameter and ten feet high

2/28/1858
I see twenty-four cones brought together under one pitch pine in a field, evidently gnawed off by a squirrel, but not opened.

Here is an in progress drawing on my drawing table. Detail to right.

Drawing ink is applied with a brush over a layer of graphite and colored pencil on paper.