Art

Item Description

Anita Barrows and Quelquefois Press

A BOXED SET OF TWO ANITA BARROWS BOOKS

Kindred Flame & Jagged Stones

$1,425

An elegant drop spine box, housing two powerful books by Berkeley poet, Anita Barrows! Left tray lined with sand-colored micro-suede, mirrored by jet-black micro-suede on the right which has a small step built in to accommodate the quarter inch difference in book widths.

Outsides of trays are covered with Japanese black silk with mohair sand-colored inclusions. Finished box measures 10 & 7/8 x  7  3/8 x 1 & 1/8 inches. Thirty boxes of Japanese burnt red cloth with black shimmer, overprinted with Anita Barrows’ linoleum cut. Names are letterpress printed on spine. Twenty-five boxes of burnt red Brillianta cloth, same cloth as cover of Jagged Stones.

Kindred Flame by Anita Barrows/ Illustrated by Mary Laird

10” x 6  11/16”

Finalist in the Carl Hertzog Book Design Competition for 2009. 

Over ten years have flashed by since I first asked Anita for poems. The Bixlers set them during the first year. I was busy working to finish other books, got side tracked and so on. Life interrupted art, so to speak. Here’s from the intro: “It was not until Mary Laird set these poems in type and showed me the book they might be that I realized that the central image recurring throughout the collection was flame. As I write this, I am acutely aware of the flames that threaten, in so many forms, to destroy our world. But there is also the searing, purifying energy of flame, which, as it did for Dante climbing the mountain of Purgatory, demands that we challenge our comfort and our fears; and there is the light that exists within all beings and which, in many traditions, is understood to be lit from a single flame. At a moment of great transition in my life, I dreamed I was handed a bowl of water on the surface of which was a living flame. My task was to hold the bowl, as I moved through my days, carefully enough so that the flame would not be extinguished. But the dialectical nature of flame asks also that we confront Tagore’s” line, Evidently the only way to find the path is to set fire to my own life”…that sense in which there are things, within us and outside us, which we must burn so that a more deeply creative and authentic way may be revealed. We are continually called to distinguish between that which must be preserved and that which must be transformed by some process initiated by destruction. All authentic relationship demands that choosing, as does all development and, indeed, all revolutionary change. “ Anita Barrows

101 in edition. 46 Pages . Six Poems. Copper corners, Barcham Green Chatham endpapers and cover papers. Covers lined with Masa, then hand-stenciled on Chatham side. 105 runs in the book. Each page has abstract woodblocks. Anita’s poems move from conscious plane to invisible plane and back, spiraling between worlds. Laced binding based on one of Priscilla Spitler’s. I had to deconstruct her book in order to figure it out! Sewn on double cords with red kangaroo laces from Australia. Hand-sewn head bands in red & white linen thread.

Jagged Stones by Anita Barrows / Illustrated by Ciel McKay

10 x 6 ½ x ½ inches, 44 pages

 This book, dedicated to the people of Lebanon, Palestine, and Iraq, consists of  four long poems, plus an opening piece, and a long introduction and equally informative colophon, ending with “In gratitude to all those keeping alive the spirit of  al Mutanabbi Street”. It emerges from our efforts to understand the struggles of people living in situations of war and occupation. Witnessing the results of genocide and war in these countries has deepened our commitment to life; we are aware that the outer wars reflect the inner ones. Our hope lies in how we resolve these personal and collective conflicts and how we share our visions as we continue to work and seek the beauty of that unlimited part of our being, the essence behind it all.~ Three copies of Jagged Stones were donated  to the Mutanabbi Street Project, spearheaded by Beau Beausoleil  and Sarah Bodman. The powerful pieces speak eloquently.

Jagged Stones is collaboration between poet Anita Barrows, her eleven year old granddaughter, Ciel McKay, and artist/printer Mary Risala Laird. Ciel drew and beautifully executed seven linoleum cuts. The British Library hopes she will continue her direction as an artist. She had tea there with her grandmother last spring. Yes, they bought two books ! You should, too.! Set in Dante by the Bixler’s, letterpress printed on Mohawk by Mary Risala Laird and Anita Barrows. Binding  of burnt red Japanese cloth drummed over boards; a thin black line of board extends over the fore-edges of the covers. Sewn with red linen thread using a link stitch, onto three small bands of purely decorative black goatskin. Edition of one hundred fifteen. Ninety for sale.

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