Letterpress printing, lithography, editioned artist’s book, 12 x 6 inches, edition of 25. $1200
Created as a tribute to a woman architect who worked at the Grand Canyon in the early 1900s. The body sheet, shaped like an adobe house, was specially made at Twinrocker using pumice from New Mexico, cooked straw and pulp painting. Three letterpress printed pamphlets, each titled using an architectural reference: Foundation, Locked Doors, Opaque Window, tell the story of the life of Mary Elizabeth Jane Colter, 11 x 30 inches open, number 66 from an edition of 100. $300
An imaginary conversation between Queen Ester and Scherezade; two women using language to save lives. Accordion with tabs, die-cut, printed color offset lithography at The University of the Arts, 8 x 8 inches, number 91 from an edition of 300. $350
Statement
I am guided and inspired by the philosophical and physical presence of the book: as a vehicle for transmitting transcendent information, as a repository of memory and loss, as a singular object binding together a multiplicity of ideas.
Biography
Lynne Avadenka combines words and images, working in a variety of media. She was recently awarded a Kresge Artist Fellowship for 2009. Avadenka has received grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Michigan Council for Arts and Cultural Affairs and the Women’s Studio Workshop. Recent awards include The Dorothy Saxe Prize, a fellowship from the Memorial Foundation for Jewish Culture, residencies at the Hadassah-Brandeis Institute in Waltham, Massachusetts, The Oberpfälzer Küntslerhaus, in Schwandorf, Germany and at the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts in Amherst, Virginia. She was a guest faculty member of Darthmouth College in the spring of 2009 and she has taught at the Center for Book Arts in New York, the Penland School of Crafts in Penland, North Carolina and the College for Creative Studies in Detroit.
Solo exhibitions of her work include Lemberg Gallery, Ferndale, Michigan in 2009, The Center for Book Arts, New York, NY in 2007 and 2001, HUC-JIR Museum in New York, NY in 2003, The Detroit Institute of Arts, Detroit, MI in 1999, and the Jewish Theological Seminary of America, in New York, NY, in 1998. Recent group exhibitions include New Works/Old Story, the Contemporary Jewish Museum of San Francisco, Sacred Texts/Contemporary Forms, at the Milwaukee Institute of Art and Design, in Milwaukee, WI, Contemporary Voices: Ritual and Repetition at the Jewish Museum, New York, NY, Collecting Perspectives: New Acquisitions, at The Jewish Museum, New York, NY, Ninety from the Nineties, at the New York Public Library, New York, NY and Girl Printers, Smith College, Northampton, MA.
Her work is included in the following selected institutions: The British Library, London, England; The Library of Congress; Washington, D.C.; The Jewish Museum, New York NY; The Detroit Institute of Arts, Detroit, MI; The Israel Museum; Jerusalem, Israel; The New York Public Library, New York, NY; The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, Ohio; The Getty Research Center, Los Angeles, CA; The Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, IL; Houghton Library at Harvard College, Cambridge, MA; The Library of the Jewish Theological Seminary of America, New York, NY; The Meermano Museum, The Hague, The Netherlands; The Toledo Museum of Art, Toledo, OH; The Newberry Library, Chicago, IL; the Sackner Archive of Concrete and Visual Poetry, Miami, FLA; Doubleday Publishing, New York, NY and is represented in numerous private collections.
