god's femur book
god's femur
An Anatomy Lesson

By Ward Schumaker
San Francisco: San Francisco Center for the Book, 2009. Edition of 100.

4.125 x 4"; 30 pages. 15 illustrations. Letterpress printed on a Vandercook 4 press. Paper: Somerset. Typeset: Gill Sans. Handbound in heavyweight illustrated paper cover with cloth spine.

Written and illustrated by Ward Schumaker, this is one in the Small Plates series published under the Imprint of the San Francisco Center for the Book. Text designed by Lili Ong and Michael Bartalos.

Kafkaesque story of a young artist meeting up with provincial tastes (or perverted minds?) in 1965 Nebraska.

Ward Schumaker: "Yes, the story in God's Femur is true—all except the part about the painting being dirty. It wasn't. And isn't. But I was making a book out of the event, a small and short book, so I came up with a different ending. And after all this time and water-under-the-bridge, did I care? Better to look back and laugh."

About the writer/artist: "As an illustrator Ward Schumaker’s work has appeared in over 100 magazines, including Poetry, The New Yorker, Le Figaro, Le Monde, Esquire Japan, and the L.A. and N.Y. Times. He has drawn for clients as diverse as Hermès, Neiman Marcus, United Airlines, and SFJazz. He is author/illustrator of three children’s books: Dance; Sing a Song of Circus; and In My Garden. He has illustrated two limited edition letterpress books for the Yolla Bolly Press: Two Kitchens in Provence by M.F.K. Fisher, and Paris France by Gertrude Stein. … He is the creator of many logotypes, including Moose’s Restaurant (San Francisco), Columbus Bakery (New York City) and MosBurger (Tokyo). He has received awards from the AIGA, CA Illustration and Design Annuals, Print Magazine, Graphis, American Illustration, and The Society of Illustrators. His work has been featured in articles in Communication Arts, Print, Step-by-Step, Design Journal (Korea), and Portfolio (Japan). With the Smithsonian Institution, Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum in New York, he received a Federal Design Achievement Award for his work on "Unlimited by Design."
$44