Maria Carolina Ceballos ~ Columbia (Canto Press)

About the artist: “María Carolina Ceballos is a Colombian book artist with interdisciplinary focus. She has exhibited her work in various cities in Colombia, the United States and Japan. She holds a BFA in Visual Arts from the Universidad de Bogotá Jorge Tadeo Lozano, and a Minor in Photography from the same university. In Spring of 2021, she graduated from the MFA in Book Arts at The University of Iowa, where she also worked as a book conservation technician and digital book design instructor. In her recent artistic practice, she has been exploring traditional book related crafts and applying them to a body of work with visual arts disciplines, creative writing, and music notation and performance. Her relationship with music comes from a passion for singing Colombian folklore music and choral sacred music, which has led her to creative research endeavors on the historical and contemporary convergences between music and book arts tied to rituals and oral tradition in Western culture and traditional Colombian cultures.”

Roturas
By Maria Carolina Ceballos
Bogota, Columbia: Canto Press, 2024. Edition of 22.

Box containing a scroll and two image pieces. 28 x 13.5 x 6 cm lidded box covered in handmade paper. Box constructed to allow scroll to sit in slots to be read. Text printed digitally on Japanese paper in Spanish. Two paper items included: a hand carved paper image that has to be seen with light from behind and an embroidered piece on paper. Written, painted, printed and bound by Ceballos. Numbered.

Maria Carolina Ceballos: "'Roturas' is about my personal experience with skin issues that have taken me to extremes in anxiety and other psychological issues. All three pieces [scroll, sewn paper piece “The Search for Calm”, hand carved image sheet “Breaks in the skin” are related to how the anxiety works and how to manage.

“In this piece I explore length and patience in the reading of a book, as a metaphor to what we experience with anxiety. The book is beautiful but frustrating, delicate but strong. Just like our bodies and our minds. In the long stroll, the handwritten text dances with hand drawn lines and shapes, creating a sort of ambient and even notations for reading. At the end of each stanza, an abstract drawing that resembles geological maps and accidents, portraits the feelings of the skin and the mind going through the anxiety process.”
$680

Espacio
By Maria Carolina Ceballos
Bogota, Columbia: Canto Press, 2022. Edition of 10.

12 x 20 x 25 cm. Digitally printed and handmade paper objects in a box covered with paste paper, colored paper and leather. Text in Spanish. Numbered.

Maria Carolina Ceballos: "’Espacio’ is an artist book written between September of 2021 and May of 2022, and made on July of 2022 in Bogotá. It’s a box containing emotions, memories and thoughts around my grandparents and their old age. The book is about space and how it contracts with age, so the form and interactions play with space and formats as the poem reads."
$950

Arbol
By Maria Carolina Ceballos
Bogota, Columbia: Canto Press, 2017 / 2021. Edition of 100.

13 x 21x 1 cm closed and about 150 x 21 x 13 cm fully or partially opened. Accordion structure. Digitally laser printed on beige and bare white papers. Text in Spanish. Green paper cover embroidered and with gold foil stamped details. Numbered.

Maria Carolina Ceballos: "'Arbol’ is a book about life and death from the metaphor of a tree. Using the accordion structure, the book can be read in multiple ways: from one side, the optimistic view of life and growth; another, the darker view of slow death and nostalgia about the past, and a more complex reading when the structure is open in more sculptural ways.

“The illustrations for the book were made in 2017, and since then, the text, form and concept changed many times until in 2021 a final edition was made."
$120

Las Plantas Invisibles /Invisible Plant
By Maria Carolina Ceballos
Bogota, Columbia: Canto Press, 2017 / 2021. 36 Copias / Copies (15 in Spanish, 11 in English).

6 x 5 cm closed. Technique: Embossing and handwriting. Letterpress printed. Numbered.

Maria Carolina Ceballos: "’Las plantas invisibles' (Invisible plant) is an artist book about the undergrowth. It talks about the silence and unexpected growth of this kind of plant, and how they show the aging of architecture and landscape.”
$100