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Claire Van Vliet founded Janus Press as a student at San
Diego State College in 1955, and after several moves has
been based since 1966 in Newark, West Burke, in Vermont's
Northeast Kingdom. For more than fifty years Van Vliet has
functioned as artist, typographer, printer, binder, and
publisher producing more than one hundred books, generally
in collaboration with a wide network of writers and other
book arts practitioners. This survey of books and broadsides
produced at Janus Press is the first comprehensive
exhibition of the Press's publications to be seen in New
York. It will present an overview of publications selected
from throughout its fifty-year history, organized in six
thematic sections to highlight Van Vliet's particular
interests.
The first section, "Defining Directions," will suggest the
extensive imaginative range of Van Vliet's concerns as an a
book artist/publisher as demonstrated by a selection of
publications from Janus' first 25 years. Included will be
her first publication, poet John Theobald's An Oxford
Odyssey, 1955, illustrated by three of Van Vliet's own
wood engravings. Her work as an artist, in particular her
interest in landscape imagery, will be highlighted in
several publications here including two non-textual books:
Some Trees and Bushes and Sun, Sky, and
Earth. The first of these is a compilation of woodcuts
and lithographs; the second is composed of dye-cut colored
acetate and cinemoid gel pages meant to be layered by the
reader to create an ever-changing landscape. Van Vliet's
predisposition to experiment with book structures and a
range of materials and processes is evident in the work by
other artists in Janus Press publications. Among these are
designer/typographer James McWilliam's N Book, 1964,
and Polyurethane Antibook, 1965; photographer Ray K.
Metzker's electrostatic prints included in Estelle
Leontief's Razerol, 1973, and Margo Lockwood's
Bare Elegy, 1980; and Jerome Kaplan's rubber eraser
relief prints in Janet Hyholm's From a Housewife's
Diary.
A major focus of Janus Press publications has been first
edition poetry, but Van Vliet has published a variety of
prose pieces and plays as well. The second section of the
show "Kafka" will feature a group of texts by Franz Kafka,
published between 1962 and 1972. Among them are Parables
and Paradoxes, 1963, and Conversation with the
Supplicant, 1971, illustrated by lithographs Van Vliet
made in Scandinavian print workshops.
Van Vliet's collaborations with Peter and Elka Schumann and
the Bread and Puppet Theater (founded in New York in 1962,
but based in Vermont since 1974) will comprise the third
section of the show, including St. Francis Preaches to
the Birds, 1978, with masonite relief prints by Peter
Schumann, a book that was produced in two hand-printed
versions as well as a trade edition by Chronicle Press.
Among Van Vliet's most original works are those she created
using colored paper pulp starting in 1977. Working at the
Twin Rocker paper mill in Brookston Indiana with Kathryn and
Howard Clark and then the Katie MacGregor and Bernie Vinzani
at the mill in Whiting, Maine, as well as at the more modest
papermaking facility she set up at Janus Press, Van Vliet
has completed numerous books and broadsides in which color
pulps act either as substrates, or as component in her
increasingly complex illustrations. A selection of these
will comprise the fourth section of the show, followed by a
section titled "Varied Collaborations" which will suggest
the range of writers and artists with whom Van Vliet has
worked. Included as well will be books she co-published with
Gefn Press, established in 1977 by Susan Johanknecht, who
previously had been an intern at Janus Press, one of many
interns Van Vliet has helped to train over the years. Van
Vliet's majestic illustrations for King Lear,
published in 1986 by Michael Alpert at the Theodore Press
will be seen as well.
The finale of the exhibition, "Exploring Structures," will
include books from the last twenty years, during which Van
Vliet has been preoccupied with developing new binding
methods as well as new ways of using paper to form
illustrations, several of which have been inspired by
quilts. New printing techniques, such as laser printing,
will be on view as well.
Broadsides, keepsakes, and ephemera will be included as
appropriate throughout the show.
Exhibition co-curators are Neal Turtell, Executive
Librarian, National Gallery of Art, and Ruth Fine, Curator
of Special Projects in Modern Art, National Gallery of Art.
Loans will come from the National Gallery of Art Library, a
private collection, and Claire Van Vliet.
LOCATION AND TIMES: Claire Van Vliet and the Janus Press:
Celebrating Fifty Years will be on view at the Grolier Club
from February 21-April 29, 2006. Hours: Monday-Saturday 10
AM - 5 PM. Open to the public free of charge. An
illustrated catalogue (8½ x 8½, 80 pp., 32
ill.) giving an overview of the Janus Press, and detailing
the work of the past fifteen years, will be available at the
Club.
For more information e-mail Megan
Smith at the Grolier Club.
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