Covers, Adaptations, and the Scarcity of Blue
Works
- 2016
- Books / editorial
- Art Gym
- Donald Morgan & Virginia Poundstone: Covers, Adaptations, and the Scarcity of Blue
Companion catalog to an exhibition combining new work from two very different artists, linked by a common interest in representation and the natural world. Curated in 2016 by Blake Shell for the Art Gym.
In botany, the color blue is harder to find than you might think. Most flowers that we perceive as blue are actually violet, with the exception of Meconopsis baileyi, a blue poppy found only above the tree line in the western Himalayas. The pursuit and representation of this bloom was the wellspring for a course of study and body of work from Brooklyn artist Virginia Poundstone.
The Northwest painter Donald Morgan’s meditations on representation led him into fiction. The Complete Works are a set of semi-sculptural paintings combining fictitious book covers based upon the midcentury Modern Library College Editions, each panel shared with a perforated matte-black field informed by a 1972 children’s counting book.
Illustrations
1.
Cover & Dustjacket
How the hell do you marry those two things on the same surface?
We didn’t. We ran Poundstone’s photograph of Meconopsis baileyi on the front cover, and die-cut a dust jacket using the pitch and proportion of the holes from one of Morgan’s paintings. When combined, Morgan’s perforated panel acts as a framing device for Poundstone’s image. Fortunately, the compositions complemented each other.
2.
Frontispiece
Twenty-four pages isn’t a lot of room, so we used the front and back flaps for custodial purposes—contributor bios up front, copyright and credits on back—and combined the rest of the ceremonial pages into the frontispiece.
3.
Curator’s notes
The Art Gym (1980–2017) was a gallery space built from the gymnasium of a former Catholic women’s college. The banks of curved windows along the north and south walls were the gallery’s most noteworthy architectural feature (you can see their shapes projected here). Poundstone’s contribution took the form of large images of Meconopsis baileyi, printed on vinyl and wrapped around the gallery’s interior walls, which had been configured to respond to the patterns of light cast by the windows.
4.
Installation view
Installation view, showing ten of Morgan’s paintings.
5.
Essay opening
The opening of the critic John Motley’s essay, showing images of each artist’s previous work.
6.
Artist’s statement
Donald Morgan’s statement on The Complete Works. Captions typically ran along the bottom of each page; here, we sourced an image of one of the Modern Library books that informed his paintings and included it.
7.
Installation detail
Five selections from The Complete Works against a detail showing their meticulous construction.
8.
Artist’s statement
Poundstone’s statement faced with the image of Meconopsis bailyi used in her installation, which can be difficult to read in the installation images.
9.
Installation view
View of that image used in two of Poundstone’s wrapped partitions.
Colophon
28pp. + cover + dustjacket
6⅜ × 11 in., ed. 300
Printed in 4c digital on matte coated paper (text); 1-color offset on uncoated paper (dust jacket), with die-cut
Composed in Lyon Text and Gill Sans Nova
- Essay
- John Motley
- Editor
- Allison Dubinsky
- Photography
- Kathleen Murney
- Printing
- Brown Printing
