Lyall F. Harris ~ Virginia

Lyall F. Harris: "Subject matter informs and determines the structure of these works, which use or reference the book form in order to explore various content."

SFCB “From the Bench of Lyall F. Harris” (July 2023): “This chat is with Lyall Harris, a book artist, painter, and writer currently based in Charlottesville, VA. Themes in her work include motherhood, family history, relationships, and the everyday. Lyall teaches book art and creative writing workshops and classes, most recently at James Madison University, the University of Virginia, and at the Virginia Center for the Book.” https://vimeo.com/843376917

Collaborations with Patricia Silva
Interview with Lyall Harris

Behold
By Lyall F. Harris
[Charlottesville, Virginia]: Lyall F. Harris, 2024. Edition of 15.

10 x 7 x 3/16” closed, opens to 28”. Dyed paper. Digitally printed text. Accordion structure with pamphlet stitching. In paper slipcase enclosure. Signed and numbered by the artist.

Lyall F. Harris: "Distressed structural materials mirror a mother's struggle to accept and, ultimately, let go."

Themes in Harris’ work include motherhood, relationships, and the everyday. This piece contemplates how we see in nature parallels to our own lives. A broken succulent grows roots after being placed in a vase with water is a reminder of the child that is growing and bursting into adulthood.

… And suddenly this underwater testament of survival
swells to fill the space around it, and me, with the assurance
that silk threads are already forming in my daughters, …

$135

How Man Can Make a Desert
By Lyall F. Harris
[Charlottesville, Virginia]: Lyall F. Harris, 2024. Edition of 5.

4 7/8 x 3 1/8 x 3/16” closed, extends to 25”. Accordion structure extending from front foredge. Dyed paper. Erasure poetry from found illustrated textbook pages. Digital printing. Housed in matching paper slipcase. Signed and numbered by the artist.

Lyall Harris: "Found poetry on illustrated textbook pages about the formation of deserts serves to expose a deeper story of transformation"
$75

My Dad
By Lyall F. Harris
[Charlottesville, Virginia]: Lyall F. Harris, 2024. Edition of 5.

4.5 x 3" closed one-sheet book. Pressure printing. Typewritten text. Housed in matching paper slipcase. Signed and numbered by the artist.

Lyall Harris: "Structure and content work closely together for a final reveal of a poignant family crossroads."

A very intimate while simply stated family struggle with an aged parent having a cancer diagnosis.
$75

out west she found the final frontier within
By Lyall F. Harris
[Charlottesville, Virginia]: Lyall F. Harris, 2024. Edition of 2.

5.5 x 6 x 1" closed , extends to 90" Accordion structure extending from front foredge. Encaustic paintings. House In paper enclosure. Signed and numbered by the artist.

Lyall F. Harris: “This accordion book titled ‘Out West She Found the Final Frontier Within’ unites a repeating ‘western’ landscape image with the notion of an interior frontier, drawing on the idea that we may travel and seek far and wide, but we inevitably bring ourselves along wherever we go.”
$350 (One Copy Available)

Grace
By Lyall F. Harris
Charlottesville, VA: Lyall F. Harris, 2023. Special Edition of 5.

10.25 x 8.25 x 1 in. Codex structure with a wrap enclosure. Bound with a French link stitch on ribbons with custom translucent envelopes, anchored by Italian stamps, containing single pages digitally printed. Signed and numbered by the artist. Editioned version includes copy of pamphlet version.

Lyall Harris: "At its core, ‘Grace’ is a book about a relationship's unbridgeable gap, in this case the relationship between a woman and her mother-in-law, and what, ultimately, can exist in that space: the possibility of grace. Catholicism - Its ideals, expectations of self-sacrifice and perfectionism - is an unnamed protagonist in this work, which advances in a numbered progression that recalls the Stations of the Cross. A second ‘protagonist’ is the handwritten letter. In Italian, their meaning likely eludes most readers of this work; they therefore function as a visual backdrop, but their intensity and sentiment are nevertheless gleaned by reading the text fragments on the recto ‘Stations of the Cross’ sides. "

i:
          Her letters
          Come through the mail slot
          A dead weight in the foyer
          Sometimes I read them
          Sometimes I don’t
          The stack grows in a box
          Dream-dark in my shed

$500 Special Edition

A simplified digital version of Grace is available in a two-signature pamphlet binding with a paper cover (7.5 x 6 x 1/8 in). Edition size 30
$25 Digital Edition

One-winged
By Lyall F. Harris
Charlottesville, VA: Lyall F. Harris , 2023. Edition of 5.

6.5 x 9.75"; 28 pages including free end pages. Accordion structure extending from front fore edge. Digital printing of text and monoprints. Full band closure with title on cover. Signed and numbered by the artist.

Lyall F. Harris: “One-wingèd’ is an accordion structure with paper covers and paper enclosure. The poetic text, which appears on the verso sides, uses the metaphor of an injured ‘one-wingèd’ bird (single wings appear on the recto sides) to reveal facets of a family ultimately ‘crushed’ by psychological abuse.”

Alexandria Searls (Daily News Record, Harrisonburg, VA) :"’One-wingèd’ by Lyall Harris…a story of love, disappointment, and emotional violence, the typeset words on one side of the accordion, and colorful wings, one at a time, on the other. The one-wing is a metaphor of damage in the romantic partner; the partner can't fly, the relationship can't fly. The one wing is beautiful, though changing in color and mood, unpredictably, dangerously."

Note: “Psychological abuse is abuse. Domestic violence hotline: 1-800-799-7233”

$150

Nature Nurture
By Lyall F. Harris
Charlottesville, Virginia: Lyall F. Harris, 2018. Edition of 50.

8 x 6" closed; 30 panels with self wrapper. Accordion structure. Signed and numbered by the artist. In lightweight slip case.

Lyall Harris: "Close-ups are paired in a series of photographs by the artist to illustrate similarities between objects from the natural world and her young children."
$150

Site
By Lyall F. Harris
Charlottesville, Virginia: Lyall F. Harris, 2018. Edition of 50.

11.25 x 6.5" closed, opens to 11.25 x 24". Letterpress printed on handmade papers from Dieu Donné. Stiff cover with title, tipped-in pages. Signed and numbered by the artist.

Artist Statement: "What happened, reader, where you are? What happens there today? asks the artists' book Site. Inspired by her discovery of a slave auction block on the first morning in her new town of Charlottesville, VA, Lyall Harris grapples with US history in a project where content is revealed and supported through its material components. With assistance from papermaker Dieu Donné, Harris created a watermark broadside, the key component of an artists' book that both points to the past and brings the reader into an awareness of present."

Any artist's proceeds from sales will be donated to the Jefferson School African American Heritage Center in Charlottesville.
$125

Florence by Day, Florence by Night
By Lyall F. Harris
Corbignano, Italy: Lyall F. Harris, 2013. Open Edition.

7.25 x 5.125" Two books, 7 x 3" closed, are each made from one sheet of paper (size A4, approximately the US standard 8.5 x 11 in.), 150 gram Daler Rowney Canford Paper, side panels are glued so that middle section only is 3-d, structures are housed together with a band. Slipped into gold envelope.

One line of text handwritten in orange in each book:
Florence by Day: "Brunelleschi's dome has been standing for 577 years."
Florence by Night: "Open edition by Lyall Harris, Florence 2013."

Lyall Harris: "To say that Florence's Duomo is iconic is an understatement. Breathtaking and unbelievable, the dome, completed in 1436 per Brunelleschi's ingenious design, dominates every image of this city."

$20

The Netting
By Lyall F. Harris
San Francisco, California: Lyall F. Harris, 2010. Edition of 10.

7 x 7"; 40 pages. Letterpress printed text from polymer plates. Front cover title printed from metal type. Nets and textures created with an etching press, then scanned and printed from polymer plates. Photos and wallpaper printed digitally. Other images hand printed linoleum cuts. Telephone cord image printed from a polymer plate. Reflective end pages. Handbound with exposed French link stitch.

Lyall Harris: "A short, visually adapted play, The Netting develops over the course of seven scenes, accompanied by images and textures, that read like dream sequences. The content is multi-layered and rife with manifestations of anxiety, which ultimately intersect and converge. This book was inspired by the short 1940s films by Maya Deren."

Maya Deren (1917-1961) was both an experimental filmmaker and film theorist whose work remains obscure even though in 1986 the American Film Institute created the Maya Deren Award for independent film and video makers.
$125

Se Ben Fu Donna
By Lyall F. Harris
Oakland, California: Lyall F. Harris, 2010. Edition of 10.

6.375 x 9.5"; 14 pages. Handset type letterpress printed. Portraits are
original drawings printed from polymer plates. Typefaces are 30 pt Solemnis, 18 pt Goudy Thirty, Centaur, Arrighi, 14 pt Centaur, Arrighi, Gill Sans, Gill Sans Italic, 12 & 10 pt, Gill Sans. Handsewn binding using pamphlet stitch.

"Se Ben Fu Donna" (although she was a woman) is a pejorative tag sometimes directed Sappho.

Lyall Harris: "A tongue and cheek interpretation of excerpts from the sole and very minimal chapter about female artists in Vasari's famous biographies, Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects with blank pages standing in for the absence of women throughout art history."

Giorgio Vasari (1511 - 1574) an Italian painter, architect, and writer is best known for his biographies of Italian Renaissance artists.
$75

Collaborations of Lyall Harris & Patricia Silva

OnWords: “The first thing artists Lyall Harris and Patricia Silva will tell you about their collaboration is that they are surprised that the work looks like it was made by one person. The reason this comment from them shouldn’t be unexpected is simply due to the fact that both artists have their own practices and, therefore, their artwork is conceptually and stylistically different from one another. In fact even their subject matter and approach to work varies considerably. So why, one might ask, has their collaboration together been so successful? They will give you a number of personal and professional reasons why they enjoy working together. And such reasons are of course very important. Yet surely the primary reason they continue to work together is that there is a space between them—a space that is not easily defined—where art is created, where the creative act is played out in ways that both stimulate and engage the artists.”

Conversation between Harris and Silva (JCBA)
Shelf Life: Before we forget with Lyall Harris and Patricia Silva

Dear Ones,
By Lyall Harris & Patricia Silva
Florence, Italy: Lyall F. Harris & Patricia Silva, 2022. Edition of 10.

10.5 x 7.5 "; 18 pages. Single sided accordion structure. Digitally printed. Signed by Harris and Silva. Numbered.

Dear Ones, took inspiration from the correspondence between two female Florentine artists from early last century and became a more ‘universal’ exploration of how correspondence is a way to witness the lives of those close to us. The book (a digitally printed accordion) reproduces on the recto sides 8 prose poem letters in English to key loved ones—mother, father, daughter, sister, husband, lover, grandmother, friend—with images of envelopes on the verso sides.

This book also found form in a gallery installation in Florence, Italy, for the exhibition “Bridges” (May-June 2022).
$250 (Last 5 copies)

The Interpreted Object
By Patricia Silva & Lyall Harris
Charlottesville, Virginia: Lyall F. Harris, 2021. Edition of 100.

8 x 6"; 72 pages. Softcover with dust jacket. Perfect bound.

Lyall Harris: "A short essay by Brunella Baldi (Cartavetra Gallery, Florence, Italy) and an artists’ statement introduce sixty-four black and white images of objects, each with a corresponding poetic text, that represent the body of work from ‘The Interpreted Object’. Originally an installation, this work by collaborators Patricia Silva and Lyall Harris finds form in an artists’ book.

“In ‘The Interpreted Object’, forgotten objects find new artistic and poetic expression. The artists searched for quasi-obsolete objects where the original purpose or use had been lost. The ‘action’ intrinsic to the object—a knife cuts, a spoon stirs—was therefore also lost, which allowed the artists to assign new actions (‘title’ verbs), according to what they perceived to be the ‘spirit’ of the object. Along with the verbs came poetic phrases that further interpreted the objects and imbued them with meaning. Verbs and phrases found form in corresponding booklets, one for each object. Through this process of (re)discovery, Silva and Harris revisit, in new ways, familiar themes of motherhood, loss, memory, and relationships.

"This artists’ book presents a compilation of the objects and texts in a single publication."

Colophon: “A first English and Italian iteration of this project, which included 64 objects and booklets, was create for the 2018 Sixteenth International Poetry Festival in Florence, Italy, Cartavetra Gallery. In 2021, the New York Center for Book Arts featured a selection of 34 objects paired with a new edition in English of accompanying text and image booklets.”
$35

Paper Boats
By Lyall Harris and Patricia Silva
Florence, Italy: Lyall F. Harris, 2017. Edition of 150.

8.5 x 8.75"; 144 pages. Printed digitally. Perfect bound. Paper-covered boards. In illustrated paper slipcase. Signed and numbered by both artists.

Paper Boats is a collaborative book project by Italian artist Patricia Silva and American artist Lyall Harris. Originally it was produced in an edition of 2 as part of their book art project "Meeting Places." This is the digital version in an edition of 150.

Artist statement: "A photo-documentary illustrates the distressing loss of identity taking place in contemporary mass immigration to Europe. The visual rhythm of the book works something like a meditation (vs. a political statement) – there are 100 images of hands with boats, interspersed with about 25 quotes (some in Italian) and 10 'portraits,' total page count is 144 – and we think it brings this content home in a striking way."

Lyall Harris: "In creative collaboration, what makes the co-created work seamless? How do combined efforts transform a creative project into something more than just the sum of its parts? Since 2014, Lyall Harris and Patricia Silva have produced a series of twelve collaborative bookworks.

"We set constraints for the process, both of materials and time, which forced us to work in an immediate, intuitive, and exploratory way. Our process began with one artist providing the inspiration and starting materials. The receiving artist then had only weeks to bring the project to a 'halfway' point, adding or editing materials sparingly during this phase. The project was then given back to the originating artist who finished the books (in an edition of 2). The varied work addresses issues and histories from our shared and layered perspectives as artists, mothers, daughters, wives, and expats in a changing and complex environment.

"Paper Boats began with a stack of origami papers, attendance booklets from the Third Order of Saint Francis, and images of paper cranes and Japanese prayer papers (o-mikuji). 100 boats were folded using papers with a 'sea' palette as well as upcycled Italian language books and maps. African, Middle Eastern, and Eastern European first names were printed on the attendance tickets along with a random number from 1 to 1,000,000. With the help of volunteer participants (faces, hands, statements), the project then became a photo-documentary about both our common humanity and the distressing loss of identity taking place in contemporary mass immigration to Europe."

Paper Boats article Voyages: Journal of Contemporary Humanism Issue 8
(Fall 2018)
$150

Before I Built A Wall, I'd Ask To Know What I Was Walling In or Out
By Lyall F. Harris
San Francisco: Lyall F. Harris, 2008. One-of-a-Kind.

Two piece presentation: book and barbed wire. Book: 2.5 x 4" closed; 52 pages; handbound. Barbed wire: 7" circumference; 2 pieces. For display book sits in center of barbed wire circles.

This bookwork symbolizes the artist's experience with a lawyer-neighbor whose only communication came in the form of documents dripping legalese.

Lyall Harris: "The title is a line from Robert Frost's Mending Wall. This book came out of the artist's struggle, misunderstanding, and disillusionment with her neighbors during the process of replacing a broken fence."
(Out of Print)

Cairn for my daughter
By Lyall F. Harris
San Francisco: Lyall F. Harris, 2008. One-of-a-Kind.

3.75 x 4 x 2.75"; 90 leaves. Materials: paper, stones, foam core, thread, glue. Map-covered boards.

Lyall Harris: "A couple of summers ago, I was in the mountains in Virginia with my oldest daughter, who was at that time six years old. We were spending the day a mile down an unmarked dirt road at a remote cabin my grandfather built in 1950 in what is now the Blue Ridge Parkway. Like my mother before me, I grew up spending weekends in this rustic cabin (no electricity or heat), including every childhood birthday. For me, the place represented both family retreat and untamed nature, and it was there that I experienced the most freedom of self and of imagination.

"I have returned to this cabin over the years, though infrequently because I now live in California. I have never been there without my parents and the time with my daughter was no exception. However, during that particular visit, the wear and tear over the years on the cabin, the diminishing distinctions between manmade (house, fences, dirt road) and surrounding nature, my aging parents, the childhood memories - they all flooded me with overwhelming poignancy. I fully felt the finity quality of my time with my parents and my daughter, the inevitable ruin of the house itself. And yet, collecting the small, flat stones with my daughter, I also sensed the continuum: the four generations of our family that have been there, the persistence of the creek, the history of the landscape and the rocks.

"My daughter and I built a miniature cairn with some of the stones; she asked me how long it would last.

"Later, when I made this book of a cairn and its wordless contours, I knew it was a marker not only for my daughter and my own past in that hidden valley in the Blue Ridge, but also a landmark gesturing towards the larger continuum."
(Out of Print)

INTERIOR LANDSCAPE
By Lyall F. Harris
San Francisco: Lyall F. Harris, 2011. Edition of 20 + 1 AP.

7.5 x 5.675 x 1.5"; 34 pages. Leporello structure. Techniques: hand coloring (gouache) with linoleum cut printmaking (prints individually made for each book), letterpress printing from photopolymer plates, ink jet printing (journaling). Housed in a cloth covered slipcase with title tipped in.

Lyall Harris: "An artist’s book about the challenges of being a mother and an artist. Sylvia Plath’s diary entries on these subjects served as the book’s point of departure.

"Plath is directly addressed as 'you' throughout my interpretations of her life as an artist and mother. My own voice hovers closely as Plath and I traverse similar ground in much of the book. This interwoven progression builds right up to Plath’s abandonment of her children through suicide; the text then diverges towards the markedly different denouement of my own story. The 'you' is both Plath and Plath as alter-ego, but it also reaches beyond these, to artist-mothers everywhere, to people who strive to accomplish but who wrestle with myriad infringements on their thinking and doing. In this work, visual depictions become metaphors for the internal battles and attempts against a dissolution of Self while language—even at its 'material' increments of syllable, letter, and comma—functions as an active agent for the project’s overall meaning.

"A landscape artist for many years, I have sought to distill and simplify the world around me into images that evoke core, essential qualities. Interior Landscape presented an opportunity to find, within my landscape vocabulary, a metaphor for the substrates of a shifting and complex psychology, with layering and the tension between containment vs. blurred edges as underlying requisites for the pictorial treatment in the book. The representations strive to embody the narrative rather than to merely illustrate it. Occupying a central position in the book, they are located on the recto pages instead of the more typical verso placement. It was paramount that the hand be present in this work, both in the handwriting and in the printmaking, the latter produced from scratch on each recto page for the entire edition of twenty books.

"INTERIOR LANDSCAPE began as a response to Sylvia Plath's journal entries on the subject of writing and motherhood but grew to encompass artist-mothers everywhere who strive to accomplish but who wrestle with myriad infringements on their thinking and doing."
(Out of Print)

Quattro Stagioni
By Lyall F. Harris
San Francisco, California: Lyall F. Harris, 2001. One-of-a-Kind.

5.25 x 3.75 x 2"; 4 pages. Digital printing. Collage. Assemblage.

Lyall Harris: "A sculptural book of haiku and visual interpretation that atypically represent the four seasons."

The childless poet
Has torn through every book
To find death's synonym.

(SOLD)

White Privilege Likes
By Lyall F. Harris
Charlottesville, Virginia: Lyall F. Harris, 2018. Edition of 20.

7 x 5"; 7 panels. Flag structure with 3 flags per page. Bound in cloth over bounds with paper illustration on front cover. Signed and numbered by the artist on the reverse side.

Lyall Harris: "Statements unfurl in this flag book that seeks to reveal problematic aspects and challenge assumptions of 'white' thinking. Images are photographic details of statues of Civil War generals taken by the artist on Monument Avenue in Richmond, VA. Harris moved to Charlottesville, VA, in 2015, just as the debate over the Civil War statues was erupting. Tensions flared dramatically in August 2017."
(Out of Print)

Who's Cooking?
Dinner Recipes from the Contemporary Working Woman in America by Lyall F. Harris San Francisco, California: Lyall F. Harris, 2011. One-of-a-Kind.

9.5 x 8.5 x 1"; 64 pages. Digital printing. Machine stitching. Variety of fabric swatches. Spiral bound.

Lyall Harris: "A book of 'recipes' and swatches of fabric conceptually paired with well known, real life women. Famous and infamous women can be found on alternating pages. With short biographies, the index becomes a critical reference. Women's roles, cultural preconceptions, and stereotypes bubble forth humorously in this book about women via food and fabric."
(Out of Print)