Splinter of Light
by Billy CollinsSplinter of Light contains four beautiful poems about fathers by Billy Collins. Fathers are complex figures in our lives, so I felt driven to explore this idea through words and imagery. The stories in these poems study the influence fathers have on sons, from a father’s effect on his son’s driving, even after death, to a son pondering his father’s effect on his writing while comparing him to Kerouac. These poems also capture tender and heartbreaking moments. In “The Stare,” a son shaves his elderly father while finding it “impossible to remember such closeness,” while in “Cancer,” a father deals with a cancer diagnosis by pretending his son is saying “campfire.”
As for the imagery in this accordion binding, I was able to create one large image out of five smaller panels. When opened to a two-page spread, the poetry on the verso side of the page interacts with an abstract 4-color image that makes sense only when combined with the other panels in the book. Memories are often just fragments of images combined in our minds to create an entire picture. In many ways, my own memories about my father are just flashes of moments that I’ve blended together over time. I printed this book to better understand my own father and the relationship I have with him.
Letterpress printed from metal types and beautiful multi-colored reduction linoleum blocks on rich Hahnemuhle Biblio paper, and bound as a hardcover accordion. The Hahnemuhle Bugra cover papers are letterpress printed from metal type and photopolymer plates, the outlines of the imagery inside. Poems by Billy Collins, reprinted with his permission from Nine Horses (Random House, 2002) and The Apple That Astonished Paris (The University of Arkansas Press, 1998).
Edition of 65
$100
All books signed by the author and artist
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