Though he’s an artist by trade, perhaps it’s no accident that Scott Sandell is also intrigued by books. His wife, Catherine Creedon, is, after all, director of the John Jermain Memorial Library, and is surrounded by them on a daily basis. But Sandell’s latest foray into the world of books as art has resulted in a collaborative tome that would hardly fit on any of the shelves at the local library.
For Sandell, it began, as ideas do — with questions. We all hold in our mind the physical notion of books as objects. But really, what makes a book? Is it words? Is it artwork? Is it both? It’s certainly pages. But how big or small can those pages be? And do they have to be bound or even in the same room as the pages they precede or follow?
Sandell recalls seeing a copy of “El Negro” a 1983 “book” composed of large lithographs by Robert Motherwell and poetry by Rafael Alberti. Sandell’s college professor had printed the oversized volume which came in a large wooden box.
“He brought it out and said, ‘This is an artist’s book.’ We said, ‘No, it’s a box with prints in it,” recalls Sandell.
The professor countered by asking what makes a book.
“I kind of liked the idea,” says Sandell. “If you have content that can go in a book, you can take the book with you and carry it around. You can also put the content on the wall or in a computer.”
So Sandell set out to explore this notion of bookmaking and brought Chris Watkins along with him. Watkins, a poet and songwriter, and Sandell got to know each other a few years back at Roanoke Vineyards on the North Fork where Watkins worked as the general manager (he’s since moved on to Ridge Vineyards in California) and Sandell designed the labels for the wine bottles.
“Chris, at the time, was flying back and forth to Florida,” explains Sandell. “He was living in Jack Kerouac’s house, a bungalow in Tampa with industrial aqua colored walls. If you’re an aspiring poet, you can apply to do this.”
“He put an antique typewriter in every room of the house with a stand and long scroll of paper in it,” continues Sandell. “Everywhere he was in the house he could spin around and write a poem — which he did. He would eventually pin the scrolls of poems up on the walls.”
“If you’re going to immerse yourself in poetry, that’s a way to do it,” adds Sandell.
For Sandell, it all made perfect sense — an experiential installation consisting of words, paper and typewriters — a total which equaled more than the sum of its parts.
“He was showing me pictures of the house decked out in these poems and it occurred to me that the poems — at that point — had become paintings,” says Sandell. “That worked for me.”
At the time, Sandell was questioning the future of painting and whether it could still be significant.
“It occurred to me that there wasn’t a lot of painting being done that was important,” he says. “There were things that were ugly and making a statement about something. But I couldn’t find painting that felt passionate, intellectual or with any serious meat.”
So Sandell engaged Watkins in a collaborative exchange.
“One day, out of the blue I emailed him an image — a long and narrow photographic tableau, with no explanation,” says Sandell. “Days later a poem arrived that was a response to the visual image. I returned the volley with a second image that related to the first poem.”
“The first image was a composite,” explains Sandell. “The bottom image is a rope tied in a knot – I saw it on the ferry docks in New London where the tugboats are. Three years later I went back and took a photo of the exact same knot. It’s the same piece of rope and the same knot.”
“A lot of the images are these desolate marine-like images,” he adds. “All the images are evocative of themes going from one to the next, poem to the image, poem to the image. Also the images are evocative of the mood I was in at the time.”
“The first poem I got back from Chris was really dark,” says Sandell. “I thought Chris’ intuition was really good with the first one. I knew we were on the same page, so to speak.”
The exchange between Sandell and Watkins, which was not unlike that of the late “mail art” pioneer Ray Johnson, who took his life by jumping off the Sag Harbor Bridge in January 1995, went on for two years. Ultimately 10 images and poems were chosen for “25 Adult Life Jackets,” a new installation by Sandell and Watkins opening this weekend at Ashawagh Hall in Springs. The work, which was recently excerpted in The Southampton Review, is also being offered as an artists’ book published by Deepwater Editions and Cascading Page.
The exhibition is, in essence, a folio sized artists’ book consisting of large, framed unbound pages with Sandell’s imagery and poetry by Watkins. Related collages are shown next to traditional books — which Sandell printed and hand sewed himself — containing Watkins’ poems. The notion of book is pushed even further by the presence of physical objects in the exhibit that act as messenger.
“What is the book is kind of fuzzy for me,” notes Sandell. “How much colder can it be than a Kindle? At least with a book, you have something to hold onto … nice paper — not plastic — and its recyclable, should you want to do that. In the show, there’s a full size dory that is a book … the poem is on the dory and the dory holds the information.”
The title of the piece, incidentally, comes from Sandell’s frequent ferry trips to New London and on up to Maine to visit his son, Ben, who was in college there at the time. The name comes from the box containing life saving equipment on the ferry.
“It was printed on the boxes that told you how to put these on,” says Sandell. “It felt odd — as if this is how we’re going to be rescued?”
It’s an interesting artistic theme for an interesting time. Sandell has been a full time artist for 30 years, and has become very attuned to the market. He admits this past year has not been a good one for artists. But interesting times also bring new opportunity.
“This year, with the economy, I’m thinking something’s rotten in Denmark,” says Sandell. ”I don’t know what’s going to happen next. I went through a period of three months where I sold nothing. I thought, ‘This is weird.”
“Then I thought, ‘Who cares?’ Let it go. It’s really an opportunity to do what I want to do — which is make artists’ books and big paintings again.”
“25 Adult Life Jackets” is showing in conjunction with an exhibition by Bill Kiriazis, and opens on Saturday, October 17, at 7 p.m. Additional viewings are by appointment by contacting deepwater@optonline.net. Ashawagh Hall is at 780 Springs Fireplace Road, East Hampton.
Top: a detail from “Reading Chinese Poetry” a collaborative piece by Scott Sandell and Chris Watkins
