SVA had a day trip down to Columbus today, and as a result I spent a potentially-reckless amount of money at the Wexner Center bookstore. My rationale is that, dividing my time as I do between Windsor and Winnipeg, I’m not usually presented with the opportunity to buy art books (at least in person) more than once or twice a year.
And this was the catalog/yearbook that I helped throw together for the residency at Plug In that just ended. In case anyone wants to know how that all shook out.
Since I likely won’t be moving into a studio-proper until October, I’m trying to get some print-on-demand things out of the gate, just to keep momentum. These are some spreads from a new book piece that I just sent off to the printer. The text is all culled from a Google search for “dream * that * was still alive,” and the photos are all random pictures from my iPhoto albums, where I’d taken two near-identical shots a few seconds apart.
The premise is a bit cringe-worthy, but the material is banal enough (the Billy Mays bit, culled from a Yahoo! Answers post, is particularly choice) that hopefully it won’t make anyone barf in his or her mouth a little bit.
If there a stabilizer for a shaky ego more effective than a stack of books with one’s name on the cover, I don’t know what it is. I’m evidently not the only person who feels this way, as there were, apparently, more print-on-demand than conventionally published titles produced last year. (Note that the figures quoted do refer to titles published and not units sold—I spent a horrified minute thinking that only one in one thousand or so Americans purchased a book in 2008, horror, in this case, being a function of near-plausibility.)
Last week, I put in an order for 30 copies of the updated version of my support-document/catalog-thing (I added pictures of the thesis show, took out mention of a piece that never ended up getting made, generally made the prose of the thing less obnoxious). They should be in sometime next week (you have to wait a long, long time if you don’t pay any expediting fees). If there’s anybody I’m likely to see in person who wants one, just let me know. They’re $30 each, I’m afraid—at what cost, vanity publishing? The things aren’t cheap to produce.
People in the States and elsewhere can order the book directly from the publishing company. There, it’s being sold at-cost, but, after shipping, it’ll end up being about $30, as well. I’m not making anything off of either transaction, I assure you.
Or you can just read or download the PDF here. (The printed book will not, I assure you, be all streaky like that: if it is, somebody is going to get cut).
