Artist\u2019s books are one of the most seldom seen forms of art. Perhaps they\u2019ve never caught on with the public because \u2014 in our time, anyway \u2014 they\u2019re usually associated with experimental, avant-garde art and they\u2019re produced in very limited editions: often an edition of one.<\/p>\n
In the U.S., Yoko Ono is certainly the best known creator of artist\u2019s books. Although Ono\u2019s artist\u2019s book Grapefruit was first published in Tokyo in a run of 400 in 1964, it was reprinted in a much bigger run by New York\u2019s Simon & Schuster in 1970, and was sometimes seen even in mainstream American bookstores during the \u201870s. Other fairly well-known American artists, such as Ed Ruscha, Raymond Pettibone and R. Crumb, have done a great deal of work with the form in the last few decades.<\/p>\n
Unusual as artist\u2019s books may be, you can see an entire exhibit devoted to them in Lake Charles. The show, titled Book Works, will be on display March 9-April 28 in the Art Associates Gallery in Central School at 809 Kirby St. The opening reception will be held Thursday March 9 from 6-7:30 pm.<\/p>\n
The artist\u2019s books in the exhibit were made by current and former McNeese art students who took a class called Contemporary Approaches to Drawing that\u2019s taught by art professor Heather Ryan Kelley at McNeese. Each of the books in the exhibition is handmade by artists who reside or have studied in the area. The works range from traditionally bound books to what Kelley describes as \u201csculptural, altered books.\u201d<\/p>\n
Here are the artists whose books you can see: Ashlen Breaux, Chance DeVille, Katy Geymann, Ron Gibson, Elizabeth Guinn, Taylor Hickey, Katelyn Hoffpauir, Linda Rae-Leigh Johnson, Stephanie Landry, Cambridge P.J. Matthews, Shannon Moore, Devin Morgan, Alex Pate, Kip T\u00eate, Sydney Thomas and Gabriella Trahan. Near this story, you should see a photo of Elizabeth Guinn\u2019s artist\u2019s book distractiFLY.<\/p>\n
Not A Running Shoe In Sight<\/strong><\/p>\n To the degree that there was a story in the special session of the Legislature, it was that Gov. Edwards wanted to pay the $300 million gap with the Rainy Day Fund and Republicans didn\u2019t.<\/p>\n But there wasn\u2019t exactly party unity on the matter. Rep. Mark Abraham, R-Lake Charles, who is on the House Appropriations Committee, said, \u201cI will vote for the rainy day fund if it means that higher education and [hospitals for the poor and uninsured] aren\u2019t cut.\u201d<\/p>\n That\u2019s a bold and courageous statement for any Louisiana politician to make. It\u2019s especially courageous for Abraham, since he\u2019s a Republican.<\/p>\n As I\u2019m writing this, it looks as if the special session will continue in the recent legislative pattern, meaning that legislative measures will be free of innovation, initiative and risk and will do nothing to solve the glaring, basic economic problems. I predict the same will be true of the coming regular session.<\/p>\n I doubt anyone is in a rush for us to get to the day when Louisiana finally gets a budget gap that\u2019s too big to be fixed by spit and polish.<\/p>\n Extra: Police Go To Parades<\/strong><\/p>\n Abraham wasn\u2019t the only Louisianan who made a bold statement in the last few days. Enjoy this colorful word picture from Col. Richie Johnson of the West Baton Rouge Sheriff\u2019s Office:<\/p>\n \u201cIt was pure ass somebody not doing their damn job. There\u2019s no sense sugar coating it to make us sound fancy.\u201d<\/p>\n Johnson was talking about Baton Rouge convict Mertis Wade, who escaped from a work release program simply by walking out the back door of the kitchen where he was supposed to be washing dishes.<\/p>\n Some might think Wade got a lucky break and should have taken advantage of it. But he chose to hang around the area. Why? Well, when he was captured and taken back to jail, he told police he\u2019d left in the first place because he wanted to see his girlfriend and go to the Mardi Gras parade.<\/p>\n Go to the Mardi Gras parade? Yeah. He\u2019s 25. It was at the parade (in Metairie) that police spotted him and arrested him.<\/p>\n I feel awful about that feller having to miss the end of his parade. Maybe the other inmates will put on a parade for him in the jail yard. Maybe if he asks them really, really nice, they\u2019ll even throw things at him.<\/p>\n Cuba: Wha\u2019 Happened?<\/strong><\/p>\n If you\u2019ve ever wondered what\u2019s happened to art in Cuba since U.S. sanctions kicked in, you only have to take a 2-hour drive to get the answers.<\/p>\n The exhibit Adi\u00f3s Utopia: Dreams and Deceptions in Cuban Art Since 1950 will be showing at the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston until May 21.<\/p>\n The exhibit includes more than 100 works of painting, graphic design, photography, video, installation and performance by more than 50 Cuban artists and designers.<\/p>\n Want to know more? Visit mfah.org.<\/p>\n The State Of State News<\/strong><\/p>\n After I settled into work on Monday, Feb. 20, I checked in with my Louisiana news feed on Twitter. As I went about my reading, I had the sense there was an usually big number of stories about sports \u2014 even for Louisiana media. I decided to start doing a little counting.<\/p>\n There were 12 consecutive Twitter posts about Louisiana sports. These came from three news sources: The Shreveport Times, The Times-Picayune and Louisiana News.<\/p>\n Then there was a brief break for a non-sports story. It was this headline from NOLA.com: \u201c2 dead, 6 wounded in bloody weekend: New Orleans area crime news.\u201d<\/p>\n And then it was back to Louisiana sports. They were the subject of the next 14 stories, in fact. In addition to the sources noted above, some of these stories came from The Advocate, The News-Star, Houma Today and The Daily Comet (Thibodeaux).<\/p>\n Is it at all surprising that while there was a run of 26 out of 27 stories about sports Louisiana was right in the middle of a special legislative session that would determine the course of the state\u2019s economic future? Why am I even asking that question? Not even a weekend\u2019s worth of Mardi Gras parade pictures and stories was able to make a dent in the succession of sports stories running early on a Monday morning \u2014 a prime time for sports competitions of all sorts.<\/p>\n A big wheel in local media once told me that only one in five people in SWLA is a sports fan. If that\u2019s true, some people somewhere are very, very confused.<\/p>\n Everybody Forgets This Column<\/strong><\/p>\n I looked at it week after week, month after month. I knew it was just a matter of time until I wrote about it. The time finally came.<\/p>\n What I\u2019d been looking at was a simple red box. It was full of Nestle Hot Cocoa Mix. Someone had brought it into the office. And then that same someone forgot about it. Now, it just sat on a shelf.\u00a0 Forgotten.<\/p>\n On the box was a short poem about the cocoa that had been written by the marketing team for the Nestle corp. The poem read:<\/p>\n THE POND FINALLY FROZE …<\/p>\n WE SKATED UNTIL DARK<\/p>\n NOBODY FORGETS THOSE DAYS<\/p>\n It may be true that nobody forgets those days. But apparently, somebody at Nestle forgot that periods go at the end of sentences.<\/p>\n The photos that accompany the poem show a young couple with their very young daughter. These three people are obviously properly dressed for extremely cold weather.<\/p>\n This gives me the notion that the pond freezes over pretty damn often, and if these people like to go skating, they go skating quite a bit. Naturally, I can\u2019t help but wonder why \u201cnobody forgets those days\u201d of skating when there are many, many days of skating year after year after year.<\/p>\n I would have found the little poem much more engaging if it had read:<\/p>\n THE POND FINALLY FROZE.<\/p>\n WE SKATED \u2018TIL WE SAW THE ALIEN SWIMMING UNDER THE ICE.<\/p>\n NOBODY FORGETS HOW DADDY SCREAMED LIKE A LITTLE GIRL.<\/p>\n I would even have gone for:<\/p>\n THE POND FINALLY FROZE.<\/p>\n WE SKATED UNTIL DARK.<\/p>\n IT WAS OK.<\/p>\n BUT NOBODY REMEMBERED IT.<\/p>\n THERE WAS NO REASON TO.<\/p>\n Anyway, bottom line is that little three-line poem up above was the best marketing the people at Nestle could come up with. What\u2019s the matter? Can\u2019t Nestle afford to hire good writers?<\/p>\n Nestle can afford anything. As I write this, Nestle is the single largest food company in the world. Its present value is in excess of $250 billion.<\/p>\n I know there\u2019s a widespread tendency for college students to stay in the Lake Area after they graduate from an institute of higher learning located here. But with $250-billion companies shelling out big bucks for marketing language as mediocre as what we\u2019ve just seen, if you have a solid background in marketing, you\u2019d be a fool not to go to the big city. Even without trying, you\u2019d improve on the status quo. Do you know you have to put a period at the end of a sentence? You do? Great, you\u2019re hired.<\/p>\n And this best part is, you won\u2019t be working in Louisiana. You\u2019ll be working at a place where you\u2019ll be paid the kind of salary that\u2019ll make you a millionaire in four or five years. So break out the hot cocoa (even though you will one day forget that you drank it).<\/p>\n Saints Preserve Us From Frizzy Hair<\/strong><\/p>\n A doctor \u2014 the Louisiana term for any person with a doctoral degree \u2014 is on the verge of achieving great things in Baton Rouge because his daughter has frizzy hair.<\/p>\n That\u2019s right. His 13 year-old-daughter has frizzy hair. And it\u2019s just as bad as it sounds. In fact, it\u2019s just awfully bad.<\/p>\n The daughter uses the word \u201cpain\u201d to describe the condition of having frizzy hair. The WAFB (Baton Rouge) reporter who brought the story forward helped to explain the pain by stating that Louisiana\u2019s rate of humidity creates \u201ca constant battle\u201d for those afflicted by the scourge of frizzy hair.<\/p>\n In every battle, one must fight an opponent. Just who is the opponent in this battle? Why, one\u2019s own hair, of course.<\/p>\n The poor, suffering daughter\u2019s father \u2014 we\u2019re going to quit calling him a doctor now \u2014 decided to gird himself for this battle by reading two long books about hair. He then asked hair product companies for samples. After creating a variety of mixes of these samples, he found a mix that greatly alleviated his daughter\u2019s painful frizziness. He decided he wanted to put the mix in a bottle and sell it to people.<\/p>\n Of course, LSU\u2019s Innovation Park decided this was a project worthy of throwing money at. The father is now producing 1,600 bottles of his hair care product \u2014 Lubricity \u2014 each day. I get the sense that he\u2019s doing all right.<\/p>\n What\u2019s the most rewarding aspect of this project? Well, Dad says, \u201cit helps people.\u201d He says he\u2019s run into customers who tell him the product has \u201cchanged [their] life.\u201d The whole thing is, he says, \u201cfulfilling.\u201d<\/p>\n I imagine! I can\u2019t help wondering how different this family might be if Dad had just sat down with his daughter one day and said, \u201cHoney, your hair looks just fine. And even if it didn\u2019t, you\u2019d be OK. You aren\u2019t your hair. You aren\u2019t even your appearance. You\u2019re OK just the way you are. You don\u2019t have to do a thing.\u201d<\/p>\n WAFB wasn\u2019t the only media venue to air this story. Our own KPLC found that the story merited reportage.<\/p>\n Meanwhile, even with the advent of Lubricity, the battle against frizziness goes on. I\u2019ve had frizzy hair for 60 years and I\u2019ve never even bought a comb. But of course, I don\u2019t have a PhD.<\/p>\n As for using Lubricity, I can\u2019t even afford generic dandruff shampoo. I\u2019ll know I\u2019ve really made it when I can buy something that costs more than VO5.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Artist\u2019s books are one of the most seldom seen forms of art. Perhaps they\u2019ve never caught on with the public because \u2014 in our time, anyway \u2014 they\u2019re usually associated with experimental, avant-garde art and they\u2019re produced in very limited editions: often an edition of one. In the U.S., Yoko Ono is certainly the best [&hellip<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":270,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[38,37],"yoast_head":"\n