Warren Buss
Beaverton, Oregon

Spoken (top right)

8" x 5.5"

SOLD!

Déshabillé (bottom right)

9" x 5.5"

$300 To Purchase Contact 23 Sandy Gallery

info@naospress.com

www.naospress.com

Artist Statement

Déshabillé-- What is truly sensual is of-the-moment in which it is happening: it is before we have words to describe it, and has no component of memory, only direct experience.

So what happens when we make sensual objects? It seems paradoxical — clothing a transient experience in the guise of a physical object. And the book, more than many other art forms, comes as a fully dressed object: ideas expressed into words, words ordered onto pages, pages gathered into signatures, signatures sewn into bindings. But still the events about which a book speaks happen in a moments of undressed experience. Is it possible to work backward, undress the book, find again the original experience while still containing it in a book structure?

Or do we lose something by trying to distill experience into objects? Is creating an object to remember something akin to Orpheus looking back at Eurydice and losing her forever?

*Note: Handwritten text in this book is by the artist; reverse-printed text is excerpted from Benjamin Jowett’s translation of Plato’s Symposium, which is in the public domain.

Spoken-- As sensual objects, books more than any other art objects demand to be held, touched, moved through in order to be fully understood. As my teacher Barb Tetenbaum often notes, the goal of making an artist’s book is to make something that cannot be understood merely by looking at a picture of it. You have to interact with it personally.

Seeing a book behind glass is to limit the reader’s experience, to ask them to scent without smelling, to feel without touching, to hear without speaking.

This book arose from thoughts about how a book might make sound - how it might speak. The structure and text explore how the materials of the book relate to the mechanics of making sound and how the written word relates to the spoken word. But who does the speaking and what is the source of creative inspiration? How far can we analyze the creative process before we are left holding nothing?

Artist Biography

Warren Buss was born in Cleveland, Ohio, some years ago. He received a B.A. in Liberal Arts from St. John’s College. After being a database programmer for just long enough, he began studying bookmaking at Oregon College of Art & Craft. He currently resides in Beaverton, Oregon, with his family.

All images and text copyright the artist. All rights reserved.