2 New Collections

I'm excited to have my work recently acquired by two fantastic collections!

A copy of Catholics is now at the Newberry Library. To learn more about the artist's book, which is a memoir that incorporates typography, illustration, and collage, click here.








And the Blanton Museum of Art at UT, Austin has obtained the original drawing of Shelley Long as Phyllis Nefler, created as a tribute to costume designer Theadora Van Runkle. To read more about Van Runkle and the other drawings I made in memory of her, click here.

Free Generative Writing Workshop this Sunday

I'm offering a prompt at June's Free Generative Writing Workshop this Sunday, June 21 at Public Space One in Iowa City. Hosted by Iowa City Poetry and Prompt Press, the monthly workshop brings together adult writers of all levels to create a supportive environment in which participants can generate new writing and meet others interested in the same. I've been doing some research about ways of combining text and image, contrasting 'solitary geniuses' like Lynda Barry and William Blake with historical, commercially-motivated, collaborative modes of creating and publishing stories—modes including medieval scriptoria and twentieth-century American mass-market comics publishers. The prompt I'm working on will include instructions to an imaginary illustrator! The workshop starts at 5:30 pm.

More Illustrations from Catholics

Here are three illustrated page spreads from my new limited-edition artist's book, Catholics. They all take place at important moments in the book's narrative arc:

A legendary quip by Tallulah Bankhead showcases some cutting anti-clerical mockery in the book's illustrated epigraph.

A crudely transformative quote from Carl Jung precedes the book’s climax. 

And Joan Crawford's purported dying words serve as an illustrated epigraph.

To learn more about Catholics, click HERE.

Catholics Goes Live

I just finished creating a web page for my new artist's book, Catholics:


http://matt-runkle.com/catholics.html


It includes a complete description of the project, as well a GIF of the book's transmutative sequence featuring a shifting frame I composed from metal type.

Catholic Souvenirs

Central to my new artist's book, Catholics, are its eulogiae, three portfolios that rely heavily on collage.

According to Colleen McDannell in Material Christianity, sixth-century pilgrims to sacred sites in Europe carried away tiny clay or glass ampullae that contained traces of dirt, oil, or water found at the visited shrine. Diagrammatic images of the location were also rendered on the exteriors of these souvenirs, called eulogiae. Each eulogia in Catholics attempts to conjure remembered space in a similar way: handwritten text and collaged images function as both architecture and performance.

In ‘Boys Town,’ the first eulogia, I attempt to create a papist Pleasure Island by contrasting stories of childhood sugar highs with events that reflect Church misogyny and violence.

In ‘Confessional,’  I use closet imagery and fragments of muscle mags as I mimic the rhetoric of Augustine by addressing my confessions to Joan Crawford.

And in ‘Dream Church,’ where hand-drawn illustrations start to invade, I try to spiritually rebuild by reflecting on my good fortune in meeting such a loving, inspiring, and ongoing collaborator.

To learn more about Catholics, read about its illustrated saints and images created from typographic ornaments!

Caxton Club Grant Presentation

Photo by Susan Hanes

Members of the Caxton Club visited the UI Center for the Book last month. I presented to the group, along with fellow Caxton Club grant recipient Candida Pagan, and I talked about the project they helped fund—an artist's book called Catholics. I'm currently binding the edition of 25 and working on designing a letterpress-printed dust jacket. Here's a draft of the jacket's blurb:

Catholics is an artist’s book, a limited-edition memoir that makes use of comics, collage, and letterpress printed typography to explore the psychic cathedral built by its author’s Catholic traditionalist upbringing. Beginning with an anti-clerical quip by Tallulah Bankhead, the book takes on a range of subjects including Catholic-Masonic tensions, the fervency of converts, the legacy of the Legion of Decency, and the spiritual significance of revelatory shrouds. In Catholics, the sacred and profane, the humorous and tragic, the zine and literary fine-press all end up as strange bedfellows in desperate need of confession.

Check back for more pics of Catholics!

Artist's Books at Prairie Lights!

Come see my multitalented students display their artist's books from our Creative Writing for Book Arts class! Subtitled 'Writing for Visual & Material Genres', the class has explored comics, zines, typography, text + image, and hybrid genres before culminating in their final project—a book whose form is integral to its content. The event is this Saturday, May 9 from 5–7 pm at Prairie Lights Bookstore.

UICB MFA Group Show

The 2015 graduating MFA's at the UI Center for the Book are currently showing selections from our thesis work at the K.K. Merker Gallery in the basement of North Hall. I'm proud to be a part of it—there's some pretty fantastic work by Maggie Heineman, Alexandra Janezic, Andrea Kohashi, Candida Pagan, Steph Rue, Leslie Smith, and Kalmia Strong. The reception is this Friday, May 8th from 4–6 pm.

Catholics on Display

I'm debuting a new artist's book, Catholics, as part of my MFA thesis show at the UI Center for the Book. I'll be showing work along with Alexandra Janezic at the K. K. Merker Gallery in the basement level of North Hall from April 13–17. The reception will be from 5:30–7:30 on Friday, April 17.

Both Janezic's and my work features images built and printed from metal type (see below). To learn more about Catholics, click here and here. I'll be posting more images from the book in the coming weeks.