Art Treasures of the Castle5000 Collection: "The Box"

This masthead is based on the shipping box for the 1950s "Art Treasures of the World" art book series.

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The Box
by Mrs.5000
Wooden Box filled with lots of stuff
One-of-a-kind item

Gift, c. 2004.

The Box was given to me by Mrs.5000 around ten years ago.

Although I mentioned it once several years ago, I've often asked myself, "Michael5000, how come you've never done a proper post on The Box?"  Well, as I took it outside to take these pictures, I remembered why.

It's really, really hard to photograph well.

But you get the idea!  What we have here is a triptych, my friends.  It is, I would go so far to say, reminiscent of late mediaeval devotional alters that wealthy folks could carry around with them so they could worship on the go.  Except, it doesn't really have much in the way of religious content.

There's lots to explore, including the mysterious drawers on the bottom.

And since it's done with mirrors, if you stare into The Box, it sometimes stares back at you.

So, that's kind of what The Box looks like.

Except it's about a million times cooler, in real life.

Art Treasures of the Castle5000 Collection: "Hráči karty karetni hry"

This masthead is based on the shipping box for the 1950s "Art Treasures of the World" art book series.

The big blue box over on the right is my treasure case.  I keep many of the smaller items from the Castle5000 Collection in it.

We moved it to a new room quite a while ago, and, as you can see from the photo, I have been extremely slow to set it back up so that the art can be enjoyed properly.  Partly this is because I am slothful.  Partly this is because I've felt like it would be a good idea to catalog our collection of inexpensive but nifty objets d'art before I set it up again.  In retrospect, the second reason seems a little ridiculous, but there it is.

Anyway, let the cataloging begin!

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Hráči karty karetni hry
by Vojtĕch Omasta and Slavomir Ravik
Large Deck of Cards with Czech text and illustrations
Mass-produced object

Gift, c. 2009.

"Hráči karty karetni hry" is Czech for -- hell, how would I know?  But it's the title of this deck of oversized cards that was sent to us from the Czech Republic by our sister-in-law, an authentic Czech person, who found it in a bookshop. 

We have it on her authority that the text is about the history, rules, and strategy of games.

It is a cleverly formatted book.  I choose to conceive of it as and treat it as an art object, and that goes a long ways towards making it "art" in my conception of the term.

Sometimes I wonder if it would fit as well into the category of "art" if the text was not in a language with exotic letter combinations and diacritical markings.  If I could read the text, and it was poorly written or even merely bland, it would probably really kill the effect.

But as things stand, it is a pretty cool item!

Further Adventures of the Running Avatar

It's been awhile since the Avatar checked in, but he certainly hasn't been standing still since we last saw him -- in person! -- on U.S. Highway 12 in Eastern Washington!  No, he's been doing what running Avatars do, which is to say moving across the map as a sort of incentive to the flesh-and-blood human doing the actual running!

Here's how far he has gone to date:

Whoops, that's a depressing choice of scale. Let's try again.

Now we're talking!  So, since we last saw the Avatar in Columbia County, Washington, he's ran northeast as far as Colfax, Washington, before turning back southeast and visiting the campus of Washington State University in Pullman.  From there, he continued east on a pedestrian trail connecting WSU with the University of Idaho in Moscow, only ten miles or so away.

Moscow had been the Avatar's destination for a long time, and having got there he faced a decision about where to head next.  This is often a pretty tough choice in the state of Idaho, where the boisterously rugged terrain resists most attempts to move from Point A to Point B in anything like a businesslike fashion.  After some woolgathering with maps of the Gem State, we came up with the "Magruder Corridor," a long gravel wilderness road that is alternately described on the internet as anything from a longish gravel road to a virtually impassible trace that only the most rugged and foolhardy would dare attempt.  I suspect it is the former in summer and the latter in winter, but since the Avatar is pretty much weatherproof he's heading that direction regardless of the season.  Sometime in early 2014, he should cross over into the state of Montana right along the bridge of Richard Nixon's nose -- that is, if you see the map of the Idaho/Montana border the way I always have.


Colfax?

Yes!  The Avatar made a point of visiting Colfax, Washington, because it is the home of the extremely excellent book artist Tim Ely.  I hardly have to tout Mr. Ely's critical credentials, as his victory in Phase 1, Flight 7 of the IAT Play-In Tournament pretty much speaks for itself.  He is a book artist with cartographic, diagrammatic, science fiction, and Egyptianate leanings, so when you throw in meticulous craftsmanship it's pretty tough to go wrong.

Ordinarily, I would refer you to his website, but it has been deemed by a Google robot to be an "attack site."  It was probably confused by the invented alphabet that Ely uses in most of his work; robots have trouble with that sort of thing.  In the meantime, here are some good sources of Tim Ely reading and gawking:

• A nice writeup from a Spokane paper.
• A blog post by someone who went to an exhibition and took some good photos.

So yeah, that's up with the Avatar!

It's the Book Arts! In Progress!

It's the Book Arts is an occasional Thursday feature highlighting the work of Mrs.5000 and other fabulous book artists.

I mentioned last week that I've ramped up the creative pursuits a little bit in the past few weeks as my calendar eased up a bit.

Mrs.5000 has been up to her own tricks, too.


work in progress
Mrs.5000, 2013 (expected)

Artist's Book in progress
Wood, paper collage, metal hardware, bits of junk

It's (related to) the Book Arts!

an occasional Thursday feature highlighting the work of Mrs.5000 and other book artists or toilers in affiliated vineyards.

Puzzle: Antique World Maps
Dad5000, c.2003

Most of the 5000s have some fairly serious arts and/or crafts going on.  Dad5000 seems like the least artsy-craftsy of the pack, in some ways, but it's something made by him that often attracts the most attention from people taking the Tour of Interesting Stuff here at Castle5000.   A Christmas present from several years ago, it's this wood-block puzzle of antique world maps.

He's done several of these in different kinds of themes: old sheet music covers, vintage holiday cards, and other kinds of paper ephemera.  (I've made a few imitations myself, too, and the crudeness of mine are a real testament to the skill and technique that dad brings to the ones he makes).  Each puzzle consists of a tray and a set of wooden cubes.  All six sides of all the cubes are used, so each puzzle is actually six different puzzles in one.

In this particular version, he used images of six antique maps with very similar looks.  This complicates solving the puzzle enormously, since it's not at all obvious which side of an individual cube needs to be used for the particular map you happen to be working on.

It's a challenging and entertaining toy, and a very handsome objet d'art.  My dad made it for me.  Lucky me, no?

The Wednesday Post

Greetings from the Upper Midwest
Reader la gringisima reinvents the vintage boring postcard.

These genre-perfect but cheerfully subversive postcards were posted on the gringa's blog here a few months ago, and I'm almost sure she gave me permission to share them here.

It's the Book Arts!

an occasional Thursday feature highlighting the work of Mrs.5000 and other fabulous book artists.

"Studio Cards"
Laura Davidson, 2010

Regular Playing Card Size
Deck of Cards in box.

The Studio Cards are a relatively recent acquisition in the Michael5000 Book Arts Collection, having been a Christmas gift from Mrs.5000.  They constitute a eminently serviceable deck of standard playing cards, but with each card individually "drawn from the visual language of Boston book artist Laura Davidson."


Each suit is also associated with a theme.  Spades are very specifically birds; hearts are trees, stones, and other natural items; diamonds are buildings and architecture; and clubs are vases, cups, and other containers.

Naturally the trouble with this kind of thing is that, although it is ostensibly for playing card games with, one hates to scuff or bend the 54 little objets d'art.  I think I'm going to play a round or two of solitaire with my deck today, though, just to authenticate the deck of cards as a deck of cards.  I'm like that.

If you wanted a deck of your own, or are shopping early for Christmas for your own husband, there are purchasing instructions here.

It's the Book Arts! Open Studio with Mrs.5000

Come along with Infinite Art Tournament as we take an exclusive tour of Mrs.5000's subterranean book arts lair!

Shh, she's working!

...with her characteristic care and precision!

The subterranean book arts lair shares much in common with the retreats of other wizards, especially in its profusion of eldrich tomes and colorful bric-a-brac.

You never know what you might end up needing, so it's best to keep everything well sorted.

After all, art is an intuitive process that depends on, and evolves in interrelationship with, its component materials!

And the craftsperson is nothing without her tools.

It's fun to go exploring in the lair.  You never know what you'll find.

It is, however, very well organized.

If you need a few broken umbrella skeletons, for instance, you'll find them right where they belong.

A place for everything!

And everything in its place!

It's the Book Arts!

an occasional Thursday feature highlighting the work of Mrs.5000 and other book artists or toilers in affiliated vineyards.

Congratulations are now due to the Haas Arts Library Special Collections at Yale University, which has not only jumped on the bandwagon of institutions across this great continent with a original Mrs.5000 in their collection -- but which had the tact and good sense to do so by commission!!  

"Geschichtliches"
Mrs.5000, 2011

Collaged wood accordion-fold book with collapsible string art; ¾” Douglas-fir boards hinged with airplane linen and usu mino repair tissue. Collage and acrylics on cold-press watercolor paper, with perforated circuit board, walnut, birch aircraft plywood, and cotton-wrapped polyester thread. 2011. Unique.

From the Artist's Statement

"....As I began work on this book, I decided to continue working with paintings from the late Gothic period—in which artists were increasingly interested in depicting architectural space, but laws of perspective were not yet fixed and codified. Many of these scenes seem oddly modern, with their tilting floors and improbable constructions, a charming, uneasy blend of fancy and observation. Moreover, they work well in an artist’s book, where the movement of facing pages emphasizes fluid, shifting viewpoints.

This time around, lacking a strong single source, it took me many days, with open books spread out on the floor in front of my bookshelves, to slowly converge on a set of images and unifying themes. On my way, I pondered the line between medieval and Renaissance, and lamented the relatively infrequent depiction of interior spaces. I coveted St. Jerome’s study, especially as imagined by da Messina and Durer, and contemplated reassigning it to various women: Jerome’s acolyte and chief funding source Saint Paula; Saint Barbara, locked in her mythical tower; or Christine de Pizan, medieval writer and proto-feminist. Eventually, I settled on a disparate series of images and texts that seemed to cohere—not one but several women, linked by threads of reading and writing, spinning and  lacemaking....

Sources:  

The book’s title, monochromatic illustrations of lace, and text in German come from Handbuch der Spitzenkunde: Technisches und Geschichtliches by Tina Frauberger, published in Leipzig in 1894. The first part of the book describes different techniques of lacemaking; the second part, “Geschichtliches,” gives brief historical accounts of lacemaking in various countries. Geschichtliches means “historical” (or, since it has a plural form, perhaps“historicals”). For me, it’s an expansive, open-ended title, referring to any number of possible stories or histories that might be suggested by the book. Though I don’t speak German, I’ve long been intrigued that its word for history shares a root with geological terms for sedimentary layers. At the bottom of one of the pages, I added a line from a poem I wrote over twenty years ago: “Geschichte is history, but also layers.”

The small, gothic text which also occurs as a collaged element is from a Swedish Bible.

The three women, one writing and two spinning with distaffs, are all from The Medieval Woman: An Illuminated Book of Days, 1985, researched and edited by Sally Fox. The woman writing is Christine de Pizan. Other images are reproductions from various art books (culled from many years of Friends of the Library book sales). The building in the third front panel is from a fresco in the Basilica of Saint Francis of Assisi, attributed to Giotto. The two back pages are dominated by the wonderful (and decidedly Renaissance) St. Jerome in His Study by Antonello da Messina. St. Jerome has been excised, but his lion still prowls about. The book and hand on the front cover are also those of St. Jerome, by Giovanni di Paolo; the same artist painted the arches to the right of St. Jerome’s  shadow-drenched arcade. The book in the foreground is in the hands of the moneylender’s wife in a well-known portrait by Quentin Matsys."

It's the Globe Arts!

There's a show opening tomorrow (Friday, Dec. 2) that has a Mrs.5000 piece in it!

Although we call it "The Globe Show" here at the Castle, its real name is "Welcome to My World."  It is at the ever-wonderful 23Sandy Gallery, which by intriguing coincidence happens to be located at -- well, near -- the intersection of NE 23rd and Sandy here on the beautiful East Side.  5 to 8 p.m.  Attendance is mandatory.

This seems like the kind of show that Map of the Week would like...

It's the Book Arts!

"The Recombinant Alice"
Mrs.5000, 2011


Limited edition in tripartite "exquisite corpse" format with photocopied illustrations and text from Lewis Carroll's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass

I have shown "you," the hypothetical blog reader, this one before, but not since 2008.  Each "page" of this book is a text from Alice and Wonderland set opposite the original engraving of the character that it describes.

However, each page is cut into thirds, and the whole is cleverly engineered so that, by flipping the little page-thirds, you can create weird new characters with weird new texts to describe them.

It is like an elaborate game of "Exquisite Corpse," with the surreal setting of Alice and Wonderland serving as a natural jumping-off point into further absurdities.

We have noticed a remarkable tendency of many readers to carefully turn all three page sections together, in order to reconstruct each original character from its three parts.  It is an entirely logical thing to do, but at the same time is a quietly hilarious defeating of the whole point.

This is I believe the only book that Mrs.5000 has made an "edition" of.  There's more than one!  In fact, I believe it is possible to purchase one from the very terrific 23Sandy gallery, located quite near the intersection of 23rd and Sandy here on the beautiful East Side.  Oh hey, it's almost time for holiday shopping!