Brief Song

Description:	found halftone blocks with chine collé on Magnani Pescia paper. Edition of 12. As with the Artist’s Book Project, I feel privileged to be a part of this world wide coalition.My print literally came to me some months ago when a box of old halftone blocks appeared in a back corner of the Printing and Book Arts Center in Rochester NY, where I often work. Dusty relics, most likely from the 1950’s, they had been picked up by a studio mate at a garage sale locally. There appeared to be some amateur bird photos and pictures of bones among them. Perhaps someone had been a birdwatcher and been involved in an areological dig. They were not identified in any way. When I found time, I printed some of them. Included among them were the image of the human skeleton and the image of the dove. Thoughts for the Al Mutanabbi print had been brewing in my head for some time and seeing these images, which speak of frailty, temporality, death, perhaps war and peach, if you will, I felt that I would pair them and create a print for the project. Found objects, lost rediscovered, recombined to take on a new meaning, pertinent to our time as well as past and present metaphors and realities; the car bombing on Al Mutanabbi Street, the street of booksellers, in Baghdad being a particular heartbreaking event in an ongoing line of war, death and human atrocities involving war and death, losses of life and culture for which we all must mourn. Saving the blocks and recirculating their images in the world brought to mind the booksellers of Mutanabbi Street who play their trade against great odds and all booksellers who are keepers of culture.I printed them in a pale silver blue ink to convey the sense of our fragile existence in this temporal place and to capture some of the gleam. The small chine colle silver bit, I felt alluded to many things; water, tears, blood, bone, teeth, vertebrae, fingerprints, musical notes and language. The question, “will our brief song live on?” is not only one that artists surely ask, but everyone… and perhaps even other living things.Thank you to Roy Sowers, friend and fellow artist at The Printing and Books Arts Center, who found and rescued the box of blocks and for his kind permission in sharing them with me.
Origin:	2015
Created By:	Leopard, Sue Huggins
Contributor(s):	Al-Mutanabbi Street Starts Here Coalition
Publisher:	Leopard Studio Editions (Rochester, NY, USA)
Source:	http://iuidigital.contentdm.oclc.org/cdm/ref/collection/AMSSH/id/1273
Collection:	Al-Mutanabbi Street Starts Here Coalition Collection
Rights:	http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/
Copyright:	In Copyright
Subjects:	artists book art bookworks

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