touch and feel
touch and feel
Date
2023
Edition Size
unique
Media
Aquatint, Calligraphy, Collage, Etching, Hand-painting, Ink, Inkjet, Monoprint, Oil paint, Photography, Rubbing, Screenprint, Spray paint, Stencil, Sugar lift, Turmeric pigment
Binding
Accordion
Format
Artist Book
Dimensions
20 × 26 × .5 in
Collection
Collection Development, Prints, Unique BooksView Collectors
Athenaeum Music & Arts Library, La Jolla
touch and feel is a massive collage of images in numerous print media gathered from across the decades, with a poetic concrete text that is gleaned from across the centuries. Intended as an emotional ‘rebus’ of intersectionality, the collage spotlights numerous iconic revolutionary figures and is intended to catalyze a meditation on violence and resistance. (Please note that the artist insists that the book was finished in the year 2023 and then transported back in time to the present date.)
PAGE NOTES: (All artwork by Marshall Weber unless noted.)
Cover, an oil painting by M. Marriot, a now unknown commercial painter of faux-Hudson Valley pastorals. The painting was acquired by the artist’s father, Filmore Weber, in the 1950s at an art sale on the West Side of Manhattan. No further information was obtainable. A commercial piece of promotional ephemera is inserted behind the distressed canvas. This found material and text provided the title of the book.
Page 1, is a red wax and Sumi ink drawing of various sauvastikas (right-facing) and swastikas (left-facing) symbols whose usage is ubiquitous in Hindi, Buddhist, and Native American cultures and in Nazi and neo-Nazi political movements.
Page 2, is a hand-pressed mono-print made from a Sumi-inked wax rubbing of a bronze plaque depicting the Statue of Liberty. (The plaque is located in Union Square Park in Manhattan.) The print was then hand-colored with a Sumi ink background and a turmeric pigment wash fills the figure.
Page 3, a red and black wax rubbing by Marshall Weber and Kurt Allerslev, made from the Edith Cavell Memorial. Sculpted by Sir George Frampton, in London, United Kingdom, the memorial is sited in St Martin’s Place, just outside the northeast corner of Trafalgar Square, north of St Martin-in-the-Fields, and is adjacent to the first headquarters of the British Red Cross, originally located at 7 St. Martin’s Place. The quote is attributed to Cavell a British nurse killed by A German firing squad during World War One, and best known for refusing to differentiate between allied and axis soldiers in her nursing duties, providing medical care for all.
Page 4, A stencil painting of Hunkpapa Lakota leader Sitting Bull, painted by Laurie Steelink (Akimel O’otham, member of the Gila River Indian Community) is collaged with rubbings from various plaques on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, in Los Angeles, CA. A turmeric pigment is used to color the background of the multi-media print/drawing.
Page 5 and 6, is a collaged black and red wax rubbing from text plaques honoring Rosa Luxembourg near Rosa Luxembourg Square in Berlin, Germany
Page 7, is an inkjet print (printed by Dana Smith of Danadanadana Limited Editions, S.F., CA) of a photograph taken by Marshall Weber on September 12th, 2001, near the fallen World Trade Centers, it documents messages of hope drawn in the dust of the destroyed towers and is excepted from Weber’s artists’ book “Eleven”.
Page 8, 9, 10, and 11, are constructed of etchings based on Weber’s calligraphy and mono-prints, which use aquatint (sugar-lift) detailing, and were done in collaboration with master-printer Michael Kempson at the acclaimed Cicada Press in Sydney, Australia.
Page 8, features a quote taken from an interview with a homeless man during Weber’s “Street Our Street” performance during the 2012 Streetopia Festival in San Francisco), and is also tinted with turmeric pigment.
Page 9, features the best-known quote from controversial French revolutionary leader Maximilien François Marie Isidore de Robespierre and is also tinted with turmeric pigment.
Page 10, features calligraphy of an excerpt from protagonist Mr. Smith’s rant from the film “The Matrix” by the Wachowski siblings.
Page 11, the etching of the Statue of Liberty gagged with the screen-printed last words of both Eric Garner and George Floyd, is also derived from the mono-print of a rubbing of the bronze plaque depicting the Statue of Liberty located in Union Square Park in Manhattan.
Page 12, is an inkjet print (printed by Dana Smith) of a fragment of the poem “The Trojan Women” by Euripides and is also excepted from Weber’s artists’ book “Eleven”.
Page 13, is an inkjet print (printed by Dana Smith) of a photograph from Weber’s artists’ book “Eleven”.
Page 14, is part of the painting that forms the cover of the book.
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