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BOUND
TO
ART

     
  A poEt'S BOOK

Noirs, bleus, sables
by Nane Couzier
     
  From September 21st to November 27th, 2005

Château Ramezay Museum

280 Notre-Dame Street East
Montréal, Québec
(514) 861-3708
     

the beginning


Noirs, bleus, sables is a poet’s book, designed and produced for book artists. Each artist who chose to become a part of this collective creative project made the unbound numbered book his or her own, transforming it into a unique and personal work of art. The author proposed not only a content, a theme, an objective, but also a situation: the text is “inscribed in the pages”, not just printed; the negative space is an integral part of it. This material and symbolic space can be embellished, extended, transcended. Participating artists had complete latitude regarding the use of the page (paper), of the book (the sequence of pages), of publication (the cultural references of the book arts). Each one was free to go beyond the established forms, to transform the object into something other, similar but distinct. The text served only to suggest modulations, variations. The artists made it into something entirely different, far from the traditional correspondence of image to text.

The poet’s exercise was based on the exploration of correspondences memories/colours. The text was divided into five parts supported by five colours associated with five different type faces. The orchestration (the page layout) of the texts offered artists pre-structured spaces which may or may not have served as reference points for personal expression. The book’s “multidirectional” space (the poetic space echoed by its typographical representation) was opened to extension in any direction.  

The book description


A first edition.

Produced by Édition d'art La Tranchefile in a "ready for binding" format, the printing of 120 copies was completed on September 15, 2001, in Montreal; typography by Isabelle Chasse; 20 copies 39.5 cm x 24.5 cm were printed by Piezo process coloured ink jet on 160 M acid-free Sundance Archive felt cover stock (numbered I to XV); 100 copies 29 cm x 18 cm, using xerography, were printed on 120 M acid-free Hammermill Archive cover stock (numbered 1 to 96).

Excerpts from Noirs, bleus, sables were published in issue 109 of the poetry magazine Estuaire in 2002. An expanded version of the collection was published in a regular edition in 2002 by Éditions du Vermillon under the title De la lumière blanche.