Iceblink
[Portland, ME]: Carrie Scanga, 2019. Hard Cover. Fine binding / Fine dust jacket. Item #9870
Oblong quarto, 12" x 10-1/2." [30] pp., illus. Limited edition, number 5 of 6 copies. Signed and hand-numbered by Scanga at the colophon. As issued, in white cloth with title in gold on the front cover, with white dust jacket, title stamped in gold on the spine. Engraved pages with letterpress, drum-leaf bound creating page spreads with full opening and view of the images without loss in the inner margin. Pagination includes the endpapers, the book comprises a title spread, a spread with an explanatory note printed in letterpress, 12 engraved page-spreads with stencil overprinting and occasional letterpress text, and finally colophon and acknowledgments occupying the rear endpaper. A fine copy.
A remarkable artist's book inspired by archival materials documenting the 1932 voyage by Marie Peary Stafford to Greenland to oversee the construction of a monument to her father, explorer Robert Peary. The title, Iceblink, refers to the perceptual phenomenon of white light reflected onto the underside of clouds close to the horizon from distant plains of ice. The idea of this refracted representation is an apt analogy for Scanga's exploration and examination of the colonial imagination in the United States particularly within American academia and how it relates to whiteness, female identity, and embodied experience. She writes, "Making art has always been linked to personal and societal healing for me, and with this piece I wanted to better understand white supremacy in the institutions I work and move in, seeking to uncover the ways that I engage with those forces and systems. I made this work to better understand the social constructs of whiteness, wanting to learn about the part I play in white supremacist systems by piecing together the story of a white woman historical figure." Part of the exploration was self-reflexive. She writes, "While reading [Stafford's] travel journal, I considered my past travel experiences and how I saw places through the lens and baggage that I carried there with me." And with that in mind, Scanga shows us Stafford's experience literally "through" her baggage, bringing to the fore all that Stafford brought, both physically and emotionally. Each of the engraved landscapes and seascapes are interpretations of photographs taken by Stafford from the ship's deck. And each of these engravings are framed, obscured, or defined by the material objects from Stafford's life at home. The overlaying stencil shapes on top of the landscapes in these images are based on the material objects named in Stafford's first day journal entry. Iceblink is a singular book by this Maine artist that presents the complexities of recognizing and responding to the white colonial frameworks while within them.
Price: $2,500.00