Brad Freeman ~ California

WE TOO
By Brad Freeman
Chicago: Brad Freeman, 2021. Edition of 56.

11.75 x 8.75"; 68 pages. Casebound. Contains two inserted books— "KOREA—JAPAN—1963", 24 pages, 9” (h) x 5.625” (w); and "HISTORY OF THE WORLD WAR", 16 pages, 5.375” (h) x 3.75” (w). Mohawk Superfine and Asuka kozo papers. Glassine envelope attached to back pastedown holds “History of the world” and the 8 page colophon. Offset printed and hand bound by Brad Freeman. Signed and numbered on the last page of the colophon.

Savannah-Rae Squair, Bath Spa University: “ [Freeman] sees it [We TOO] as a ‘visual narrative’ and now appreciates the relationship between photography and narrative in a way he did not before. The book contains a short series of photographs that his father took while based in Korea and Japan. Brad has carefully selected and arranged the photographs to reflect the perspective of the world that his father revealed. The book, printed on Japanese paper and bound in a traditional Japanese way, ranges from photographs that capture the simplicity of a Korean woman doing her washing to ones that show the devastation and ‘perishing’ of the public in the Hiroshima bombings.”

The eight page colophon explains some of the motivations, content, and form of WE TOO as well as the locations and dates of the photos, printing ink color and the making of the book. The last page of the book lists the location and date of the photographs by page.

Brad Freeman, colophon: "Among other things WE TOO contains a sentimental homage to my father using some of his photos—and an expression of love for a friend—floating along in various page-to-page sequences, interventions, ruptures, recapitulations, and associations that hopefully convey some of my views about the world and the bookness of the book.

"Like my mentor Joe Ruther I use the offset press as a painter uses a brush—this last phrase from Eugene Feldman who was an artist also using the offset press this way. Ruther intervened at all stages in the print process from photograph to darkroom (pre-digital) to plate making and ultimately during the actual offset printing. The results of this activity could not be predicted exactly but they presented many surprises which introduced new methods of working. Ruther called this play—in art school parlance, thinking and making.

"I offset printed WE TOO on the Heidelberg GTO (eine farben) at the Center for Book and Paper/Columbia College Chicago between November, 2018 and March, 2020. The paper is Mohawk Superfine and Asuka kozo. All photographs and design are mine except where noted. The binding was completed at my home studio in Chicago. Many of the sheets of paper in this book were re-purposed using already printed and leftover sheets from some of my earlier artist books. I overprinted these sheets—first with black ink then metallic ink surprinted on top of the black—I was hoping to create more visual complexity, ambiguity, beauty, and meaning with the images.

"The inserted 24 page book titled KOREA—JAPAN—1963 contains photographs by my father Tom Freeman. In this post-mortem collaboration I arranged his photographs as a way to create a sequence that may approach in substance his values concerning the world as it was circumstantially presented to him. The sequence starts on an army base where he was stationed close by the DMZ between North and South Korea. The book ends with photographs he took in Hiroshima at ground zero of the 1945 atomic bomb blast. Some of the text and images, including my photographs, in WE TOO are responses to my dad’s photographs."
$300

brocade in the dark of night
By Brad Freeman
Chicago: Brad Freeman, 2017. Edition of 35.

11.5 x 9.5"; 32 pages. Offset printed. Bound in printed paper-covered boards with cloth spine. Signed and numbered.

Brad Freeman: "The title for 'brocade in the dark of night' is a quote from The Tale of Genji by Murasaki Shikibu. 'Autumn leaves that fall in the mountains, with no one to see them, are like brocade in the dark of night.' (translation by Royall Tyler).

"[S]some of the images ... are from the Japan Project [Brad Freeman, 2013-14]. The sheets are some of the leftover offset pages. ...The offset printing process necessarily produces a lot of printed paper and as there were only ten in the edition of the 'Japan Project' I decided to repurpose some of the remaining pages. I folded each sheet and inserted them into a signature in the order as they appeared in the 'Japan Project' and sewed the signature. To my surprise and delight a compelling and perfectly ordered arrangement was the result. This probably had something to do with the original pagination of the Japan Project. And the dark dark pages with patterns that drift into blackness reminded me of the rather melancholy yet beautiful and poignant quote from The Tale of Genji, which I had read as part of my research for the Japan Project. Sometimes the two works - Japan Project and brocade in the dark of night - make me think of variation on a theme, like in music. And to me this makes sense because there is definitely the influence of music when I'm considering the flow of images and pages in the book form."
$125

Wrong Size Fits All
a book of miracles and mishaps
By Brad Freeman
Chicago, Illinois: JAB Books, 2010. Edition of 90.

6 x 9 x .75"; 134 unnumbered pages. Photographs, writing, design, digital collage, printing, and binding by the artist. Offset printed on the Heidelberg GTO onto Monadnock Dulcet 100# text paper. Printed in cmyk, duotones, quadtones, etc. Exposed seam binding with three leather straps. Printed boards.

Brad Freeman: "The title is a play on words from the expression 'one size fits all' and the implication is that nothing is perfect, that in life there is always some unexpected issue that presents itself to change things.

"What is the book about? It's about a lot things but basically about the deaths of my sister and dad within a two year period. One of the joys of my life was to visit my sister, who had been a great influence on me as is reflected at the beginning of chapter one. The book, through the brief poetic writing, does not refer specifically to her death rather to the feelings I experienced thinking of her and how she influenced me.

"The chapters' beginnings and endings are determined by the signatures. In other words, chapter one is the first signature, etc. The conceptual leaps between the chapters, rather than being subtle segues, reflect the abrupt changes in thoughts that we have that are sometimes incomprehensible at first.

"One thing that the writing about my dad is meant to convey was my inability to come to terms in a sympathetic way to his decline.

"During the printing I used the specific creative potential of offset lithography to make some of the images. In other words a lot of the images were created by various combinatory and chance operations while printing, while I maintained strict curatorial control. I am inspired by the layering and flow and structure of music and tried to reflect this in the dense layering of imagery that occurs in the book.

"I chose the exposed spine binding because it allows the pages to lie as flat as possible. The book should be placed on a table for viewing, rather than held up in the hands."

Additional information, Brad Freeman: "The whole second chapter of Wrong Size Fits All is a sardonic view of the folly of American militarism starting with the Civil War and ending with the Iraq / Afghanistan wars - and including a digital collage of Janet Jackson singing and dancing while dressed in military camouflage. The text "MISTAKING MILITARISM FOR FASHION" is written on the page." (Finalist in the 2011 MCBA Prize)
$350

Nether Wallop
By Brad Freeman
Chicago, Illinois: Brad Freeman, 2003/2008. Edition of 200.

5.75 x 5.7"; 102 pages. Offset except the first four pages and colophon, which are letterpress. Offset pages printed on the Heiddelburg KORD at Nexus Press, Atlanta, in the fall 2002. Letterpress pages printed at the Center for Book & Paper Arts - Chicago. Paper: French' Dur-O-Tone Newsprint. Bound in Chicago, 2008. Conceived, designed, photographed, printed, and bound by Brad Freeman.

Brad Freeman: "Conceptually the book explores the shifting areas of intersections between the public and private self, especially looking at how individual lives are entwined within larger historical narratives. The approach is more poetic, visually and textually, rather than didactic, I hope. I chose the lightest weight paper I could run in the offset press (except the end sheets which are necessarily heavy to provide a strong structure to the binding at the point of joining the text block to the cover). This light paper and modest size of the physical dimensions of the book are meant to slow the reader, to impart a sense of delicacy, a sense of fragility of life. The light paper will hopefully suggest to the reader that a slow, careful reading is called for....

"There are a combination of found photographs and photographs that I took (held the camera, composed an image from the world in front of the lens, etc.). I only clarify this a bit because of the verb 'took' - we really do 'take' a bit of the world with photography I suppose....

"The 'unfinished' covers ... I could easily have printed something but preferred for this book a reference to the making of the book, the making of the world in which we live, the process that is life ..."

Additional information, Brad Freeman: "Nether Wallop is really about colonialism and war. There is a subtle (and long) visual narrative of colonialism (British in South Africa, whaling; Panama Canal; etc) and war culminating in a photograph I took in October 2001 (one month after the attacks on the twin towers) from the Empire State building looking south toward where the twin towers used to be. On the previous page is a photograph that is in MuzeLink [1997] also of the twin towers taken from the Empire State Building in the mid 1990s, a few years prior to the attack."
$250

Once Removed
By Brad Freeman & Anne George
Minneapolis, Minnesota: Bolger Concept to Print, 2003. Edition of 50.

17.25 x 12"; 32 pages.Offset printed. Images composed on a Mac Powerbook G4 and ibook. Font: Agenda. Photographs by both Brad Freeman and Anne George. Patterned green cloth boards with gilt stamped titling on front board. Case bound with jaconnet hinge binding.

Brad Freeman: "This book is a collaboration between the artist and Anne George for the Concept to Print Residency at MCBA. The project set forth by the artists was to explore through textual/visual means the concept of artificial flowers. Emanating from this point of reference were ideas of permanence, the constructs of female beauty, ephemerality, simulacra, fashion, color, shape, and much more."

MCBA: "Artists Anne George and Brad Freeman managed to fit a lot stuff in a very small package during the course of Minnesota Center for Book Arts' National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) - sponsored Concept to Print Residency. George, a Minneapolis artist, was selected from applicants nationwide to work with Freeman over an intense four-week period, using the state-of-the art production capabilities of Bolger Concept to Print. The collaboration resulted in 'Once Removed,' an engaging medley of text and image exploring the concept of artificiality. Though embodied predominantly by flowers - silk, plastic, and cut paper - the petulant metaphor is extended through layered imagery to move significant aspects of life itself. Lush colors, complex overprinting and partly occluded images suggest a disconcerting reality where even the dimensionality of the page is suspect."
$300

emerging sentience
By Brad Freeman & Johanna Drucker
Charlottesville / Atlanta: JAB Books, 2001. Edition of 50.

16.375" x 11"; 33 pages. Printed paper over boards with cloth spine. Printed on Mohawk Superfine and Monadnock Astrolite (both neutral pH) with Wikoff Sunfast Ink at Nexus Press in Atlanta. Photographs, digital prepress and printing by Brad Freeman. Text by Johanna Drucker. Signed and numbered by artists.

Project Statement: "Emerging Sentience was produced for the Poetry Plastique exhibition organized by Charles Bernstein and Jay Sanders at the Marianne Boesky Gallery. The conceptual foundation of the project is expressed concisely in its title: to make a work about sentience as an emergent property of intelligent systems. The original text had been written some time before, as one of the pieces in Deterring Discourse."

Brad Freeman: "It is based on the following question: Is conscious self awareness an emergent function of complex systems or is it the spark of life? In other words, is there such a thing as artificial intelligence in, say, computers?"

Johanna Drucker interview with Tate Shaw for JAB: "The piece, "Emerging Sentience," was part of a set of short pieces that were published as Deterring Discourse in the early 1990s. They each had new technology themes and also were responses to the closing down of public information and debate in the news around the first Gulf War. We lifted it out and condensed it slightly for this book. ...

"With Emerging Sentience we took the distilled, edited text and I laid it out so it would read from a distance, on the wall, in a grid. The text is a double text, embedded—one text is visible and legible when it is on the wall but it is set into a smaller text where it reads as well. We taped up the black and white text print outs and kept reworking that design until we liked it independent of the images. Brad was shooting pictures, but he made them work within the design after the text had been structured. It was an interesting exercise for both of us to see the difference in these approaches.

"As for the language—! My head just processes this way. I'm still trying to push this continual shift of register into a highly eclectic mode. The heterogeneity of contemporary language we encounter on a regular basis and the effects in terms of producing us as cultural/social/ historical subjects is something I am so aware of all the time. I always say my sensibility is created at the intersection of Mallarmé and the tabloid press. But of course, nothing is that simple. I don't use any mechanical devices—no word lists, no processing techniques or cut up—just the random access of memory and association as I write. Punning and double entendre paraphrase are like cross-links or hypertext phrases that let me step from one linguistic zone to another in a jump."
$1750

The Grass is Greener
By Brad Freeman
Charlottesville & Atlanta: JAB Books & Nexus Press, 2001. Edition of 500.

7.25 x 5"; 48 unnumbered pages. Offset printed in duotones and CMYK on Astrolite by Monadnock. Case bound with illustrated covers. Photographed, designed, and digitally manipulated by Brad Freeman.

Nexus Press: "The pathos and beauty of mortal frustrations comprise the central theme of The Grass is Greener. The repetitive enclosure of the book form, with its capacity to enact a cycle of constraint within the bound sequence of its pages, reinforces the irony of this work — even as the final signature pulls back, catching its breath and ours in a dry laugh of response. This book is tight, succinct, and highly aesthetic as an expression of a wry, dark vision of the lived condition.

"Finely wrought images of grass changing color, the pacing motions of a caged tiger, the expressive response of a watching crowd —- in these three signatures the theme of this book is enacted as a cycle of repetition and frustration. Highly aesthetic, its attitude doesn't reinforce a sense of futility so much as comment ironically on the lived condition. Freeman's capacity to use the book form, print medium, color, intensity, and visual range is aptly demonstrated in this succinct, tightly crafted work."

The photographs were taken in Baton Rouge, Morgan City, and Tallahassee in 1999 and 1975.
$40

MuzeLink aka MzLK. THE TOURS.
BY Brad Freeman
Purchase, New York: JAB Books, 1997. Edition of 100.

11 x 8.5"; 168 pages; opens to 11 x 17". Traditional and alternative graphic arts darkroom pre-press as well as computer generated photo-based imagery offset printed by Brad Freeman on Warren's LOE dull coated 100 lb. text in around ten colors. Duotones, tritones and four color separations throughout. Case bound and hand sewn by the artist. Signed and numbered by Freeman on page 167.

Brad Freeman: "MuzeLink is a personal / printing history starting with a playful deconstruction of the offset printing process then linking to four color reproductions of 19th century chromolithographs (the progenitor of offset lithography). These images provide a succinct view of the social values of that time and place. This is a complex book which resonates backward and forward, referencing the book as concept and historical form, and the book as an artist's medium.

"In MuzeLink a textual / visual narrative traces the path of the European take over of North America (slaughter of the native Indians, slavery of Africans) with reproductions of 19th century chromolithographs. This section segues into photographs I took of a Ku Klux Klan rally in Tallahassee in 1976. Later in the book is a section titled Architecture and Military Museums that has a blatantly anti-war theme including the story of Yasotay, a general in Genghis Khan's army who welcomed death in battle."

Nancy Princenthal, On Paper Nov. - Dec. 1997: "... There is nothing schematic about this book. Presented in unique covers collaged from set-up sheets titled in silver, and bound in Asahi silk, Freeman's visual feast can be sampled as freely as any hot-linked hypertext. It is served, however, with the composure of someone who knows his story will satisfy even those who read it from front to back."
$1,500 (a few copies remaining)

Murder of Crows
By Brad Freeman
Philadelphia: Varicose Productions / The University of the Arts Philadelphia, 1991. Edition of 65.

5.6 x 6.7"; 16 pages (unpaginated). Offset printed in five colors on Mohawk Superfine. Softcover with sewn binding. Text and drawings by Brad Freeman.

A haunting dream sequence of alienation and loss. Etiolated drawings reflect absence of spirit. An exaltation of larks is supplanted by a murder of crows. No saving surrealistic humor here. It's the bleakest form of adolescent pit – except it gave us this book, a victory of sorts for art.
(SOLD)

Nova Reperta
By Brad Freeman and Johanna Drucker
New Haven, Connecticut: JAB Books, 1999. Edition of 75.

16.625 x 10.125" (closed); 66 pages. Photographs and offset lithography (digital and photomechanical prepress) by Brad Freeman. Text by Johanna Drucker. Paper Mohawk Superfine. Hardbound with brass posts in boards and silk. With a stand of varnished red oak that serves as a base. Signed and numbered.

Brad Freeman: "Nova Reperta is a contemporary response to a book of engravings made from drawings by the Dutch artist Jan van der Straet (Johannes Stradanus) in which he celebrated those innovations that had shaped the modern world in the latter half of the 16th century. Produced in an era of rapid-seeming development and considerable global exploration, the spirit of Stradanus's work reflected an unqualified embrace of progress. Celebrating change wrought by various mechanical and technical inventions, including the reproduction through copper engraving that fostered the printing of images, his drawings documented many specific discoveries in pictorial formats.

“The authors' response is conceived as a dialogue with rather than an imitation of the original work. It makes no attempt to mimic Stradanus's pictorial strategies, nor to be consistent with his celebratory spirit. Rather, it is a critical reflection upon the extension of that world view of progress from a perspective possible more than four centuries later.”
(SOLD)

SIMWAR
By Brad Freeman
Philadelphia: Varicose Productions / Borowsky Center for Publication Arts, 1991. Edition of 300.

6.5 x 6"; 30 pages. Softcover. Offset printed in duotones on Lustro dull. Stapled binding.

Freeman recounts how his idea of the Vietnam War (could be any war, couldn't it?) shifts from heroic idealism to grimmer reality.

Brad Freeman: "Television and video game images of simulated and real war raise questions as to how these technologies separate people from the tragic consequences of war. A parallel autobiographical text relates the author's adolescent experience in a hospital with men wounded in war."
(SOLD)