Jan Estep, Issue: Erasure, Volume Three, May 2012, collaborative artist book, paperback, perfect bound, four-color, offset printed, 80 pages, 6.5" x 9", included “If/When… Mountains Were Oceans.”

Issue: Erasure

The poet William Butler Yeats wrote, “Man is in love and loves what vanishes, What more is there to say?”

[2012] Isue: Image and Text is a workshop-based course that I teach every few years through the Department of Art at the University of Minnesota-Twin Cities. In the course, students collaborate to create and publish an artist book. For the Spring 2012 class, 20 artists contributed work–including photography, poetry, film, ceramics, and graphic design–inspired by the theme of Erasure. The result is the artist book Issue: Erasure.

The artist Bas Jan Ader wrote, “Thoughts unsaid and then forgotten.”

Erasure can mean many things, from the physical act of erasing something–a word, a mark, a life–to the emotional act of erasure–memory loss, social invisibility, self-annihilation, death–to the collapse of a star, the erosion of a mountain or the extinction of a species. Working collaboratively and by consensus, we developed our individual artistic ideas into a single book. The book was printed in Minneapolis as an 80-page, four-color, offset publication, in an edition of 500.

In the spirit of collaboration, we launched a Kickstarter campaign to help fund the project. Check out our Kickstarter video, which explains the class and the book idea. Additional support was provided from student course fees and the Department of Art.

Participating artists for Issue: Erasure (Spring 2012) include: Miranda Brandon, Jon Dahlin, Casey Dickinson, Jan Estep, Luci Haas, Terry Hildebrand, Fred Larson, Blake Leigh, Alicia Losier, Jared Martin, Bridget Mendel, Sophia Mohs, Joe Moore, Marlo Munch, Keit Osadchuk, Megan Rosenberger, Christopher Selleck, Rachael Slater, Rachael Twait, and Sarita Zaleha.

Alongside the artist projects and index pages, the book includes an essay written by me, titled “If/When… Mountains Were Oceans.”

see gallery of pages for the entire project

see gallery of pages for my essay

Issue: Erasure is the third volume in the four-part “Issue” series. Each offset-printed book explores a chosen theme from a variety of artistic perspectives. The first volume, Issue: Below Ground was created with students through the University of MN course taught in Fall 2007, published in Winter 2008. Volume two, Issue: Land (Fall 2010) was produced outside the formal course framework and includes an international mix of artists. Volume four, Issue: Seen/Unseen, was produced through the UMN course taught in Fall 2014.

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