Book Power!

Ellen Knudson
Crooked Letter Press
Gainesville, FL

Wild Girls Redux: An Operator’s Manual

This book is a revisit of a book created almost 12 years ago. The original book, How to Become One of the Original Wild Girls, was designed and printed in 1997. That book is a playful list of imaginary rules that should be followed to achieve wild girl status. The rules are light-hearted, but they have the sting of recognition that most women realize to be sexist in nature. Wild Girls Redux: An Operator’s Manual reexamines these issues, using motorcycle road and driving rules as text along with images of pin-up girls and industrial schematic illustrations. The tactile materials of the book include pink heart paper doilies, white doily placemats, flocked paper covers, and green office ledger papers. The intent of the Wild Girls Redux: An Operator’s Manual is tongue-in-cheek and provides the ordinary, mechanical, and absurd rules of how to operate women.

Wild Girls Redux: An Operator's Manual is the winner of the 2009 Florida Artist's Book Prize for The Bienes Museum of the Modern Book and The Florida Center for the Book.

All parts of the book are designed and letterpress printed from photo-polymer plates by Ellen Knudson, Crooked Letter Press. 2009. Text adapted from the Missouri Department of Revenue Motorcycle Operator Manual. Typefaces are Blue Highway, French Cursive, and Cooper Black. Paper is Indian Sunn Hemp Contemporary.

Cover is flocked paper in maroon. Binding is an accordion portfolio cover with two pamphlet structures sewn in. Lining paper is Hahnemühle Bugra in Fawn. Each book comes with a set of stickers, kept inside a yellow office mailing envelope decorated with a wrap-around belly band. 40 pages. 9 x 5 x .5 inches closed 9 x 20 x .5 inches open. 2009. Edition of 100. $250

To purchase, please contact Laura at 23 Sandy Gallery.