November 2011 / Loose Leaf

Loose Leaf:
Artists and writers make books together

Julia Freeman | Stacey Levine,
Daniel R. Smith | Karen Finneyfrock
Ellen Ziegler | Frances McCue | Patti Smith
Ellen Ziegler | Patti Smith

November 02 – 26, 2011
Reception / Thursday, November 03, 6–8pm, Reading: 8pm

Artists’ Talk and Writers’ Reading /
Saturday, November 19, 7 pm
Refreshments

The artists and writers in Loose Leaf stretch the definition of a "book" to the paper-thin. Whether through unexpected use of materials or exuberant trampling on the last of any resemblance to the book as we know it, these verbal/visual teams have engendered utterly original work that "reads" on countless levels. Here are collaborations that catapult the meaning of the written word beyond anything imaginable.

Artists and writers /

Karen Finneyfrock is a poet and novelist. She is the author of the book of poems, Ceremony for the Choking Ghost, available on Write Bloody, and the young adult novel, Celia the Dark and Weird, due on The Viking Press in 2012. In 2010, Karen traveled to Nepal as a Cultural Envoy through the US Department of State to perform and teach poetry and in 2011, she did a reading tour in Germany sponsored by the US Embassy.

Julia Freeman holds an MFA from the University of Washington and a BFA from Kansas City Art Institute. Her most recent solo exhibition, Very Little Room for Mishaps, was featured at King County's 4Culture Gallery in 2011 and reviewed in the New American Paintings blog.

Stacey Levine is the author of My Horse and Other Stories (PEN/West Fiction Award) and the novels Dra-- and Frances Johnson (finalist, Washington State Book Award). She was awarded The Stranger Genius Prize for Literature in 2009. Her short story collection The Girl with Brown Fur was published in the spring of 2011 by Starcherone/Dzanc.

Frances McCue, co-founder of Richard Hugo House, won the 2011 Washington State Book Award for her book The Bled, from which the poems in this show were taken. Her 2010 book, The Car That Brought You Here Still Runs, was a nonfiction/history finalist for the Washington State Book Award. She was a finalist for the Artist Trust Innovator Award for 2011.

Daniel R. Smith, Seattle curator and graphic designer, has organized three major poster exhibits for Bumbershoot promoting dialogue between Seattle and Havana, Tehran, Moscow as well as Thunderbitch: Women Designers in Northwest Rock 1966-2010. He is Design Director at Tether, a design and branding firm in Pioneer Square.

Patti Smith is a singer/songwriter, poet and visual artist. Her most recent book of poetry is Auguries of Innocence: Poems, from which the poems in this show were taken.

Ellen Ziegler's artist book, The Book of Knowledge, won the First Prize Juror’s Purchase Award at the 2011 Brand 40: National Works on Paper Invitational in Los Angeles. Her installation Prognosticators was featured at the 2011 Sofia Biennale, Sofia, Bulgaria. In 2009 she performed It Takes One to Know One at One and Other in Trafalgar Square, London, a project of Antony Gormley. She is a member of SOIL Gallery.