BOOK DRAWINGS #1–12

An A4 booklet of drawings made from a single A4 sheet that is printed on both sides and then folded, stapled and trimmed by hand to create the book.

Published by Piece of Paper Press, BOOK DRAWINGS #1–12 by Andrea Mason is POPP.042.

Distributed in a numbered limited-edition of 150 copies.

My book was published simultaneously with POPP.041 by Sharon Kivland:
Piece of Paper Press is delighted to publish new titles by two leading artists and writers working at the interface between visual art and literature. THE INCORRUPTIBLE by Sharon Kivland (POPP.041) is published simultaneously with BOOK DRAWINGS #1–12 by Andrea Mason (POPP.042). Each is distributed in a numbered limited-edition of 150 copies.

These mostly left the building yesterday. The photo above is of two bundles of the finished books by the respective artists, which as usual were wrapped in offcuts of the printed sheets. Sharon Kivland’s THE INCORRUPTIBLE emulates the house style of French publishing house Gallimard. And that face! Don’t you just love that drawing of Beckett by Andrea Mason?

Kivland writes: THE INCORRUPTIBLE was written on a single day, one of mourning, on 10 Thermidor – it is the date, in Year II, on which Robespierre and twenty-one others were guillotined without trial in the Place de la Revolution, Paris. It is a short (and angry) account of unbearable loss, in which I speak for Éléonore Duplay, known as Cornélie, a daughter of the radical household in which Robespierre lodged. After his death, she was known as his widow, though the truth of their relationship is unknown.

Mason writes: These book drawings – presented here in the order in which I posted them on Instagram – are a near-alphabetical inventory of novels I choose to keep, within the process of which there is a sifting and sorting, as well as an intimate process of revelation. This shelf of books largely contains books bought long ago. More recent piles of books sit elsewhere. As I continue the drawings, I will need to choose whether to disrupt my system further, or whether to divert across to books housed elsewhere, non-alphabetically, which reflect a more up to date self-portrait.

ICYM, Piece of Paper Press was founded in 1994, designed as a low-tech, sustainable artists’ book project to commission and publish new writings, visual and graphic works by artists and writers. Each miniature copy is made from a single A4 sheet that is printed on both sides and then folded, stapled and trimmed by hand to create the book. There is no schedule; titles are published when they are ready.

It was a very happy accident that these two titles just happened to be ready to publish at the same time.

Piece of Paper Press titles are always distributed free, usually in a limited edition of 150. Fifty copies are distributed by the contributor, and around a hundred to the press’s slowly evolving mailing list, which is gradually displaced by past contributors. Remaining copies are added to the project’s archive. Some titles have been given away at special events, or as larger runs inserted in magazines.

A display of the entire project archive (then to date), ‘Piece of Paper Press: Artworks and Ephemera, 1994-2017’, took place at Site Gallery, Sheffield, in Strong Language curated by Tim Etchells for Off The Shelf Festival of Books, October 2018. See Chris Saunders’ photos of the six-vitrine display here…

Accessible collections holding Piece of Paper Press titles include Arnolfini archive, Bristol; Chelsea School of Art Library; Live Art Development Agency study room; and UCL Small Press Collections, London.