Personal fulfillment often consists of finding that place where several of the things one loves intersect.   I found that place in artists' books.   My love for painting, printmaking, narrative, words, tactile surfaces, sequential images & intimate quiet places all exist in the artist book. Artist's books have therefore been a great priority for me for the past twenty-five years and are one of my primary art forms. As both a lover of books, and a lover of art, I ardently present this group of artists' books created in the United States.

Books have played a unique role in history as both an art form and as a receptacle for ideas. Artists have been creating books for over 2000 years in a tradition that encompasses Leonardo da Vinci, Albrecht Durer, William Blake and William Morris.   Artists, who use the book format, give us an art form that exists where literature, painting, printmaking, sculpture, craft and photography merge or join borders.  

The artists I have chosen for this exhibition all place aesthetics and content before all other considerations to make their books complete creative works. These books were created to be works of art. They are not replicas of art that lives in a different shape. Claire Owen feels that the book form offers a unique challenge to the artists in fulfilling both its historical functions, as a vehicle of information, and as a ritual object of beauty and devotion.

I admire those artists whose work pushes the boundary of "What is a Book?"   I admire artists who are avant-garde and innovative, who are exploring additional book shapes and qualities including: scrolls - tablets - cards - and electronic formats. I admire artists whose books investigate the relationship between words, images and structure.   I admire artists who are coming to the book from a place outside of the traditional   "Craft Tradition" as well as those artists who attend to the traditions of this craft.  

The theme of this exhibition is: Old and New; Dialogue and Bridges between Cultures.   Nancy Atakan says that her book explores the idea of art as dialogue. Every step in the materialization of her artist book requires communication with someone speaking or using different verbal or visual language. Using this process she points out that,   "even mundane objects such as tea carry cultural meaning and can be the focal point for social interaction."

Anne Sue Hirshorn's work, "Variations on T.S. Eliot, Burnt Norton", interprets this poignant poem. The pages are each a variation on a single print. Selected passages of the poem convey meaning through color, form and inter-related text. Robert Roesch is involved with personal narrative. Using superb hand colored Iris Prints, Roesch tells the story of a sailing adventure. Denis Carbone and Patty Smith have crafted elegant bindings, and page formats for their superb publications. Susan Viguers explores personal relationships in her artist books. Alexandria Lerner and Carol Moore concentrate on the sculptural qualities of the book. Both presenting shaped books whose form help to intensify the message of the works.

History shows us that as new technologies materialize, seemingly obsolete technologies often persist as art forms.   Several of the artists whose works I have chosen utilize these "old" technologies in new ways. Claire Owen uses photo-etchings to illustrate her intriguing book, Honey from the Mouth of a Wolf. Dotty Attie uses Lithography to produce her exquisite small images.   She presents her pages unbound in a folder.   Attie writes her own provocative texts to accompany the images. New technology makes books that are printed by computerized methods possible, but the love of the artist for the tactile and sensory qualities found in the artist book remains.

The artist book differs from the traditional book in that there is absolute freedom for the artist in the selection of materials, sizes and shapes. This art form is consistently popular with artists and the art -interested public from all over the world and is being used by contemporary artists to make aesthetic statements. Over the past 40 years artists' books have become a pervasive art form, and perhaps a trend in American culture.   I believe that this interest and popularity is due to the artists' intense need to communicate, met by the viewers' interest in the narrative content of artworks.

Artists have found in the book structure, an art medium that is flexible and interdisciplinary.   Artists like the quiet intimacy of the book. They like the way that private things can be depicted between pages that shut tight. They enjoy the way that books present events that take place over time, similar to film, video and theater.   I included artists in this exhibition who share an impulse to make the type of art, visual, verbal, and tactile, that creates references to the private experience we have with books.   Unlike the formal experience of art viewed on gallery walls, books create a feeling of participation.  

The artists' book is an art form that is capable of reaching a broad audience, and of being reproduced as a multiple for distribution.   The private press, small press and amateur press or hand-made books all serve the need for this production and distribution.

The disciplines of art and literature, art and craft, and between popular culture and the "high arts" have been fading and becoming fluid in our contemporary art world. As a curator, I did not intend to draw a hard line on a definition of "what is an artist book?" I wanted to present many creative and challenging artist books, books that blur the distinctions between the arts.

I am honored to have the opportunity to be part of Bibliotheca Alexandrina's First International Artists' Book Biennale, both as a curator and as an artist.

- Suzanne Reese Horvitz, Guest Curator, 2004

Dr Horvitz is a painter, born in Philadelphia, USA. She received numerous grants and awards.   She has had individual exhibitions and is in the permanent collections of many international museums. She was the curator of over 20 exhibitions of artists' books.   She has lectured and given workshops on Book Arts for the US State Department throughout the Middle East, the Far East, South America and Europe.

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