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| Dorothy Shinn, Akron Beacon Journal: “Many of the effects that come so easily now were hard-won inventions, discoveries and refinements by the pioneers of photography. Among them is one whose work is … Bea Nettles. … The photographs of Bea Nettles often depict the artist's intimate family life, yet they also speak to the broad ideas of what it means to be a mother, teacher and artist, which she describes as her greatest roles. … Many of her images contain metaphoric views of domesticity and motherhood. This poetic approach is apparent throughout her career with the inclusion of text in images, inventive bookmaking and self-publishing.” | |
Documenting Family |
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14 Mysteries 3.75 x 2" closed; extends to 17"; 14 pages. Accordion book with tie closure. Board bound with illustrated title label on front cover. Bea Nettles: "14 Mysteries is an accordion book that features the keys that were found years ago in our home when we moved to Illinois." Text which runs along the bottom edge underneath the images of the keys: "These keys were found in a cluster when we moved here in 1984. Their purposes have long been forgotten. After twenty-two years they hang on a hook in the basement. No one has the heart to just throw them away. One never knows when their role in our house will be revealed." This is a board-bound version of the leather and slipcased version published in 2008 in an edition of 5. |
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The Fig Leaf 3 x 4 " closed, extended to 23.5"; 8 pages. Accordion book structure. Grey museum board cover with label. Printed using an Epson printer. Bea Nettles: "While I was in Italy, I became curious about the use of the fig leaf, so I created this first book about its history in art." Text: "The fig leaves that we see on Greek and Roman torsos were added to them after the Council of Trent and a 1557 edict from Pope Paul IV. Having been firmly attached to these existing sculptures, they continue to cling to them to this very day." |
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| Documenting family has been a consistent activity throughout Nettles'work | |
R. Suntop's Sunspots 3.75 x 5.25"; single 8 x 10" sheet folded into covers. Image printed by an Epson Ink Jet printer. Suminigashi [literally "spilled ink," traditional Japanese paper marbling] paper over boards with cloth spine. Illustrated paper title on front board. Bea Nettles: "[This books] opens to reveal a drawing of sunspots made by my daughter as a young child during the 1980s at Montessori School."
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Family Resemblance: 5.5 x 7.5"; 57 pages. Codex grey-green cloth bound, grey end sheets. Signed inside front. Over 75 family photos, predominately black-and-white. Includes index of photos with dates and locations. Bea Nettles: "My Grandmother Noble gave me my first camera when I was ten years old. She didn't purchase it, but had received it as a bonus of some sort. It was red plastic and took wide roll film. This was in 1956, so 2006 marks the fiftieth year that I have been making portraits of my family in Florida. Photography today is so easy and cheap that it is ubiquitous. Huge quantities of pictures are created, looked at, then deleted. In the fifties, film was expensive and I can remember planning and taking almost every shot. I still have all the negatives." |
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| Visiting graveyards, a fascination with names and tombstones | |
Springs Victory: Kore Comes Back 4.5 x 11.5 x .25" closed, extends to 23.5"; 8 pages. Accordion structure. Digitally printed on Tyvek. Bound in cloth covered boards with pictorial paper title label on front cover. Laid in a cloth covered box with pictorial paper title on top cover. Colophon adhered to interior base. Signed and numbered by the artist. Bea Nettles: "During my travels to cemeteries, I have photographed over six thousand surnames that are parts of speech that I find on headstones. For sometimes obvious, but also curious reasons, people have been named for places, occupations, plants, animals, colors and personalities. Using these words I have created several books and card decks that investigate language, mythology, history, and some of life’s major events. "The inspiration to write my version of the myth of Persephone (also known as Kore by the Greeks) occurred to me because I had already located the surnames of Demeter, her mother the goddess of grain, her uncle Neptune and the messenger god Hermes. Additional searches located other key characters including her father Jupiter (the Roman Zeus), and her husband and king of the underworld Hades. "What followed were months of thinking about my favorite season and this familiar myth. It is a compelling explanation for the return of spring every year and a story of a powerful mother/daughter bond. Corn, wheat, barley, oats all appear as do abundant birds. Winter is filled with wind storms, frost, sleet, ice and snow. "I am continuing to collect new and marvelously descriptive words!." Bruce Michelson, Professor Emeritus, Department of English, UIUC: "What it does is recover a deeper history and inherent strangeness of American names, forgotten contrails that connect us to places, trades, faiths, and other circumstances far back and far away. ....the names of the dead here become a kind of chorus, or voices in a cantata, in which another old and foggy story of death and life rises out of the mythology textbooks and recovers a power to mean and to haunt; and families in that chorus seem to merge into something like a people, or a vast tribe rolling down through time. … What I mean to say is that this really works, and that I value it.” |
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Worlds Motherway 6.75 x 8.75 x .75" closed; extends to 102"; 16 pages. Accordion structure. Digitally printed on Tyvek. Cloth covered boards. Pictorial title label on front cover. Enclosed in slipcase. Signed and numbered by the artist. Bea Nettles: "During my travels to cemeteries, I have photographed thousands of last names on gravestones that are parts of speech. With these words I have created books that investigate language, history, and some of life’s events. Gathering these names it became apparent how difficult it would be to tell women’s stories, as most of the occupations and many of the physical characteristics that feature as surnames reflect our patriarchal method of naming. In the English language, names with the suffix son or man abound. I have selected three surnames that are traditionally women’s first names: Eve, Judy, and Hester. "Motherhood was the common link I found in each story plus a degree of guilt, blame or shame, which I have tried to address in this interpretation. 'Worlds Motherway'came from Adam’s naming of Eve as the 'mother of all the living.'" |
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| Hawk / Dove By Bea Nettles Urbana, Illinois: Bea Nettles, 2013. Trade edition: open. Trade Edition: 5.25 x 9.5" closed, extends to 38"; four fold. Dos-a-dos. Bound in grey museum board. Paper title HAWK on one board and paper title DOVE on the other. Digitally printed on cotton rag paper. Laid in a white paper wrapper. Signed by the artist. Bea Nettles: "Recently I have photographed the last names of veterans in national cemeteries. My latest book is a dos-a-dos (a reversible book telling two stories) that contains poems about war & peace written with these names. The text mirrors itself in places, including contrasting images of real battles (war)and pillow battles (peace)." Colophon: "The sheer number of individuals who have dedicated their efforts, and in many cases given their very lives, is extraordinarily moving. Several of the graves documented in this book date back to the Civil War and the beginnings of our national cemetery system, and some as recent as this year, 2013." $125 (Last 2 copes) |
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| Bea Nettles out of Print and SOLD titles: |
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60 Old Trees [Open edition] 4.25 x 5.25"; 60 pages. Black-and-white photographs of trees from Nettles’ files. Each tree identified by place and year photographed. Clothbound with title label inset on front board. Printed on a laser printer. Created in celebration of Nettles' 60th birthday.
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60 Old Trees [Deluxe Version 1] 8.25 x 9 x 1"; 60 pages. Epson prints (uniformly 5.75” spare) on Cranes Duo. Quarter leather. Textured paper slipcase with paper title. Brown-toned Epson prints of sixty trees from Nettles’ files. Each tree identified by place and year photographed. Recently bound. Deluxe version of the smaller format 60 Old Trees produced in an open edition in 2007 for Nettles' 60th birthday. |
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Aging Gracefully 6.5 x 5" closed; extends to 12". Tunnel book of Epson prints of the artist's mother from a young girl of 5 to a woman in her 80's. Printed on acid free paper in sepia tones. Cut on a laser cutter. Bound in gold book cloth. Housed in a cloth-covered slipcase with an image of the mirror on the front. Originally published as an edition of 2 designed in black-and-white in 2001. Here images of Nettles' mother document the passage from childhood through maturity. The body changes, the roles change — school girl to bride to parent — one life. Dedicated to Nettles' mother, Grace. |
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Close to Home 10.5 x 13 x .5"; 9 single pages. Epson prints on 100% rag paper. Images originally created in 1981-2 using a 16x20 inch pinhole camera loaded with ortho film. Images then contact printed from the film onto vinyl base sheets using light sensitive pigments. Prints in this portfolio printed digitally on acid free paper. Prints housed in a drop-spine clamshell box covered in green cloth with a paper title inset on top. Signed and numbered on the box lid. Portfolio of work made by the artist in the early 1980's when she was the mother of an infant and toddler. The nine prints: Bad Laughing Frog, Bird Scissors, Caterpillar, Fish Plate, Gator Shirt, Humpty Dumpty, Dish and Spoon, Pack up your Troubles, and Snake Through the Window Dream. They chronicle the events and objects of childhood, using pinhole optics to approximate a childlike vision of the world. The original prints were made using multi-colored bichromate printing, exhibited twice in NYC, and have been published in magazines and text books. Artist’s statement from the original exhibition: "With a three-year-old daughter and an infant son, I found myself living amidst mounds of toys, clothes, and clutter. Included in the general mess were some special things that evoked fantasies of interstellar voyages, objects springing to life while grown-ups slept, nightmares creeping through the open windows. I wanted to document these items from a child's perspective...." |
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Dream Pages 7.25 x 9.25"; 18 pages. Collaged photographs printed by offset lithography onto Warren's Patina 80 lb stock. Printed in dark purple ink. Additional colors screenprinted by Nettles. Saddle stitch binding. Screenprinted golden palm trees on grey cover Encased in pale yellow vinyl slipcase. Signed in pencil on inside front cover. Bea Nettles, from a 1978 interview with Thomas Dugan, Photography Between Covers: "In Summer, 1975, I finished Dream Pages, which was the first time I had ever done anything with my own writing. I had kept a dream journal (and still do) for maybe three years before Dream Pages. I went through it and took dreams directly from the journal, ones that were most vivid in my memory, or most interesting, and incorporated them into this book. It is probably the most esoteric and personal of all the books, but it's been one of my favorites. The imagery is derived from xeroxed photos and collages which I drew into, made halftones and offset printed, then photo silkscreened over. " ... my dreams are a real source for me, of course that's a personal source fed by everything I take in. "I don't always [write them down], I'm getting kind of lazy about it, but I do remember them often, and I try to make myself write things down. They're pretty interesting, too, the combinations of things that happen when your body is resting. "No, [I don't try to interpret them], not really. Some are obvious, like when my teaching was very frustrating, I dreamed of trying to do a demonstration on a three-legged table. But I've had other dreams and maybe told them to my husband and they're often obvious." |
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Eager 2.5” x 3.25” x .25”; 14 cards enclosed in a deckle-edged handmade paper wrap with button and twine closure. Digital prints on 100% rag paper. Signed and numbered by the artist. Bea Nettles: “In the woods and along the banks of a shallow creek near my home, a family of beavers busied themselves felling trees and building small dams. For almost two years I admired and recorded their work. Now they have disappeared from the area. I miss watching their progress.” The thirteen photographs for "Eager" were made from March 2010 through Christmas Day 2011 by the artist. |
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| Eighty Little Lambs By Bea Nettles Urbana, Illinois: Bea Nettles, 2012. Edition of 6. 5.25 x 7.5"; 18 pages. Printed on a digital offset printer. Decorative end sheets. Sewn pamphlet binding with a parchment paper wrap. Colophon: "It was common practice in the Victorian age to mark the grave of an infant or very young child with a carved lamb. Some of these poignant markers are so worn that the names can no longer be read, but the guardians remain faithfully atop the stones." Bea Nettles: "For over a year, I have been using a black and white cell phone ap to photograph the lamb monuments found in many graveyards. Most of these are close to one hundred years old today. I have arranged the lambs from distinct to almost dissolved as a meditation upon the effects of time and memory." (Out of Print) |
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The Fig Leaf [Deluxe Version] 3.125 x 4.25 " closed, extended to 23.5"; 8 pages. Accordion book structure. Bea Nettles: "While I was in Italy, I became curious about the use of the fig leaf, so I created this first book about its history in art. "Text describes the papal decree that put fig leaves on many classical sculptures, which is illustrated by a series of photographs of fig leaves from the Vatican museum." |
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Forty Forevers 6 x 7.5" closed, extends to 44.5"; 8 pages. Single-sided accordion. Printed on 100% rag paper. Clothbound. Enclosed in a parchment paper wrap. Signed and numbered by the artist. Bea Nettles: "Over the years I’ve recorded hearts carved on trees. They raise many questions. Are pocket knives still common? Were these marks made secretly or as an open and serious declaration? My grandparents used forty forevers to express their concept of a truly long stretch of time. Did the couples remain together forever? As can be observed in some cases, nature has the ability to erase even the most ardent emotions. "Forty Forevers contains 40 digital photographs of initials cut into hearts on tree trunks. The carvings fade gradually and become illegible towards book's end." |
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| Gullah ABC By Bea Nettles Urbana, Illinois: Bea Nettles, 2012. Edition of 2. 3.125 x 4.625" closed, extends to 72"; 14 pages. Accordion structure. Epson prints. Bound in cloth-covered boards with paper title label on front board. Parchment wrapper with slip and slot closure. Signed and numbered by the artist. Prints of an alphabet shot from tree formations in Gullah country of North Florida, Georgia, and South Carolina. (Cloth bound edition, out of print) |
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Hair Loss 4 x 5.5" closed; 4 x 68" opened; 13 pages. Leather bound with slipcase. Accordion structure. Printed on acid free paper with inkjet printer. End sheets of abaca paper with embedded hair. The artist discovered in August 2002 that she had infiltrating ductal Hair Loss is a pictorial account of Bea Nettles' passage through |
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Indra's Net 4 x 22" scroll. Housed in a handmade circular tube, which is covered on one end by a tyvek lid with attached glass bead. Silver bell attached to interior of lid. Housing covered with sumingashi marbled silk. Printed on cotton rag paper by an Epson printer. Scroll verso marbled using sumingashi technique. Ribbon tie closure for scroll. "Indra's Net" is a poem by Grace Noble Nettles from the book Corners: Grace and Bea Nettles. Grace Nettles, the bookmaker's mother, died in 2007. She was a teacher and a poet. Bea Nettles: "This new scroll has just been completed in an edition of nine. The tubular boxes were crafted with hand marbled silk and silver tyvek coverings. When the lid is lifted, you will ring a small silver bell. The poem is printed on a spider-web background."
(SOLD/Out of Print) |
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Lazy Goody Land 4 x 8 x 7.8"; 12 pages. Perfect bound in orange bookcloth with gold pigskin spine. Decorative papers throughout. Collage of photographic etchings. Bea Nettles: "This perfect bound book of collages features photographic etchings which are proof prints from two previous series: Landscapes of Innocence and Life's Lessons. It shows a journey through an imaginary land of goodies...cookies and candy...featured in a Dutch poem [“Lazy Goody Land” taken from Tales Told in Holland, Olive Miller, ed. (1926)].”
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| North Florida ABC By Bea Nettles Urbana, Illinois: Bea Nettles, 2014. Edition of 2. 3.125 x 4.625" closed, extends to 72"; 14 pages. Accordion structure. Epson colored prints. Bound in leather-covered boards with paper title label on front board. Parchment wrapper. Signed and numbered by the artist. Prints of an alphabet found in tree formations in North Florida and Georgia. (Leather edition, Out of Print) |
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Paper Birds 4 x 8 x 1"; 12 pages. Collages of photographic etchings, laser prints, and decorative papers. Perfect bound with blue leather spine and cloth-covered boards. Bea Nettles: "After reading a book about James Audubon’s journey to Newfoundland and Labrador, I became inspired to make my own book of birds. The backgrounds are etchings that I created many years ago combined in collages with digital prints of birds I have photographed (ok, some were stuffed birds, I admit it.)" |
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Place 4 Booklets: each 9 x 9", opening to 9 x 18". Digital offset printing. In a 9.5 x 9.5" illustrated slipcase. Signed by Nettles on the case. Bea Nettles: "Poems about American history have been written using the last names from gravestones that are nouns, verbs, and adjectives. The stories are arranged chronologically from the regions earliest days and end with stories of families being reunited or going home." The stories are managed through a set of four booklets which represent place by dividing the country into quadrants - North, South, East, and West. Colophon: "Place is a manifestation of my continued fascination with descriptive family names that are nouns, verbs, and adjectives, my own nettles included. How did such names become attached to people and what might be their effect? Do people notice? Many names are explained by occupation (rider, roper, master), physical characteristics (brunette, dimple, blush), dwelling place (appleyard, grimwood, halfhill). Other categories I found were food (corn, fruit, olive), animals, birds, alcohol, money … or its lack, weather, water, plants (nettles, beans, cotton) and trees (oak, chestnut, linden, birch). "What began with a few photographs of gravestones in the fall of 2010 has grown to a collection of over 2,500, primarily taken with my cellphone and managed digitally. My first project was Stonecipher: A Book of Seasons in which I used these stones to write poetry about the passage of a year. In Stonecipher, I had limited my search to thirty minutes from home. "On my travels, I continued to seek out cemeteries, walking countless miles up and down the rows. I decided to create another book, this time featuring the four cardinal directions: north, south, east and west. It became apparent to me that I could write an interpretive history of the United States using the names of some of the families who immigrated here. Each story begins with the settlement of the region and ends with contemporary families headed home. "I set up several parameters for this project, aiming for correct grammar spelling (hawks not hawkes) in the construction of the narrative. I used only last names (yes, victor and jack are surnames too) and did not remove or add letters. I broke my rule when I included sisters, which was not a surname that I found although I know it exists. This word helped me to include more of the history of women. The occupations that I could find were primarily masculine (with the possible exceptions of cook, baker, fiddler, housekeeper, nurse, and milliner). Also our naming conventions are primarily use son (jackson, johnson) and man (spellman, wellman, sellman, bellman, and dillman, killman, hillman and tillman). "To keep the project a manageable size, the stones had to be made small, so the photographs were retouched digitally for clarity and to remove first names and dates. You will have to trust me about this. Indeed, among the common names that we no longer think about at all, these wonderful and curious names do exist." |
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| A Playa ABC By Bea Nettles Urbana, Illinois: Bea Nettles, 2014. Edition of 3. 3.125 x 4.625" closed, extends to 72"; 14 pages. Accordion structure. Epson colored prints. Bound in leather-covered boards with paper title label on front board. Parchment wrapper. Signed and numbered by the artist. Prints of an alphabet found in tree formations at Playa, an artists' retreat near Sumner Lake, Oregon. (SOLD/Out of Print) |
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Rachel's Holidays 7.5 x 7.75 "; 32 pages including free end pages. 15 color images scanned from the original color negatives printed using an Epson 4800 printer. Printed on cotton rag paper. Housed in lightweight paper slipcase in Christmas colors. Bound in red leather with paper title on cover. Exposed stab binding with three green leather accent strips entwined horizontally. Bea Nettles, Colophon: "I printed six sets of the images in this book in 1984 using the dye transfer process. Dye transfer printing was complicated, but worth the trouble, as it was considered one of the most permanent color printing methods. The method was discontinued with the advent of digital photography. Materials for this process no longer exist." From the introduction: "This sequence draws upon the events in my daughter Rachel's life during the 'holiday' season from Halloween through Christmas in 1983. That Thanksgiving, our family traveled to Sanibel Island, Florida, a place justifiably famous for outstanding shelling. Her memories of that trip, and the events and traditions associated with the fall and winter holiday season are the basis for the images which begin and end with Rachel lost in thought in Sanibel." |
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The Skirted Garden: 20 Years of Images 8.5 x 11"; 48 pages. Halftones. Softbound. Major themes in Bea Nettles' work were celebrated in 1990 with the production of this retrospective book. It is a helpful supplement to her other works. From the Conclusion of The Skirted Garden: “I chose to name this book primarily after a painting by the same name done over 20 years ago... I would also like to speak to the importance of the garden in my own life. I am a gardener, as are my parents. It is not surprising that working with plants is an activity I require. I also love to share starts of plants with others. This gives me the greatest pleasure. Perhaps it contributes to my desire for immortality, but when people tell me they think of me when they see a plant I gave them doing well in their yard I feel great. There are some parallels to making art and tending one’s garden, but again sharing is a key activity. It is reassuring to think that sometimes something that I have nurtured and grown (and here I mean an idea or an image) can be split up, shared, and even better yet transplanted into someone else’s backyard.” |
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Swamp Lady 3.25 x 4.25"; 29 cards. Experimental four color printing done on a small offset press by Bea Nettles. This work first appeared in Colors: An Offset Portfolio, published by Florida State University. Deck is encased in a white box with Swamp Lady label and consists of pairs of images including Gator, Palm, Dive, Snorkle, and Beach. Cards are varnished on both sides and corners are rounded. Bea Nettles: "A variation on the card game Old Maid. Dealer shuffles and deals the cards. Players look at their cards and put any pairs face up on the table. The dealer starts the play by offering his hand, face down to the player on his left, who picks any card. If this makes a pair, put it down face up. That player then offers his hand to the next. The player left with the SL card is the SWAMP LADY!" |
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Southern Roots 4 x 8 x 1"; 12 pages. Collages of photographic etchings, laser prints, decorative papers. Perfect bound with fish-leather spine and cloth-covered boards. Bea Nettles: "I am a Florida native, so when the winter comes in the Midwest I often find myself longing for a warmer, greener place.This book is an imaginary botanical including plants from Florida, especially lotus flowers and their seedpods, which we call winkiepins."
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Stonecipher: A Book of Seasons 5.5 x 9.75 x 2.5" container with 4 accordion books. Each book: 4.5 x 9" closed, 34" extended; eight plates. Printed on Hahnemühle cotton rag paper with Epson printer. Grosgrain ribbon tie around books. Container: cloth-covered 2-piece telescoping box; title tipped on lid. A book of poetry for each of the four seasons created from family names on headstones. Bea Nettles: "This summer I began to photograph the last names on headstones that could be used as parts of speech. I went out early in the mornings and spent peaceful hours walking the rows of stones with only the birds for companions. I found this quest fascinating and wondered how these family names came about. Often people were named after places, occupations, plants, animals, colors, and personalities. Many names became familiar, but some were absolutely unique. All were found within thirty minutes of my home in Urbana, Illinois, primarily in Champaign County. It seemed appropriate to arrange these words poetically by the seasons to emphasize the passage of time."
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Stonecipher: A Book of Seasons [paperback] 4.5 x 11" opens to 4.5 x 17". Double-sided accordion. Color Xerox on 90lb coated stock. Printed paper bandoleer slipcase. Bea Nettles: "A four section double-sided accordion fold that alludes to the seasons in poetry created from headstones that are nouns, verbs, and adjectives."
Bea Nettles: "This summer I began to photograph the last names on headstones that could be used as parts of speech. I went out early in the mornings and spent peaceful hours walking the rows of stones with only the birds for companions. I found this quest fascinating and wondered how these family names came about. Often people were named after places, occupations, plants, animals, colors, and personalities. Many names became familiar, but some were absolutely unique. All were found within thirty minutes of my home in Urbana, Illinois, primarily in Champaign County. It seemed appropriate to arrange these words poetically by the seasons to emphasize the passage of time." |
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| Time's Traces By Bea Nettles Urbana, Illinois: Bea Nettles, 2012. Open Edition. 4.5 x 5.5" extends to 24"; 6 pages. Accordion structure extending from both boards. Printed with an Epson printer on cotton rag paper. Bound in grey museum board with illustrated paper title on front cover and ribbon tie closure. Parchment wrap with slot and slip closure. Bea Nettles: "Footprints found in the sand on Florida's Gulf Coast shot with an I-phone app and arranged in a trail." (Out of Print) |
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