133 Fruit Labels

By Erica Van Horn
Clonmel, Tipperary, Ireland: Coracle Press, 2018. Edition size unstated.

5.75 x 4"; 56 pages. Printed digital in four colors. Bound in yellow glossy wraps.

After is a dos-a-dos book with ghost images from the interleaving of an old art catalogue and other images of 'after"-ness, paired with a blackout poem.

Pages of images of fruit labels and their names with an introductory essay by Erica Van Horn.

Coracle Press: "A swatch of 25 sheets of peeled-off individual fruit labels, collected as a way of enhancing an understanding of the French. Essentially, an artist's book as it deals with and classifies its single subject."

Erica Van Horn, March 6, 2018: "It is not a new thing for me to play with the tiny labels found on fruit. I think my whole family fiddles with them. My father was never happy until all labels were removed from any fruit which came into the house. He took them off and he threw them away. It was a form of tidying. It might have just been fussing.

"I too remove labels from fruit but increasingly I have been doing it in order to save the labels. I began to line them up on a gridded card and then I wrote the name of the fruit in French. I was able to do this as a way to trick myself into believing that it was a vocabulary-building exercise. The only two fruit words I did not already know were those for Persimmon and Pomegranate. Now that I know these words are KAKI and GRENADE, I am no longer learning any new fruit words. But I am still collecting the labels. Vegetables do not have stickers on them. There is no chance that my learning will extend in that direction. "I began by writing out four fruit words on a card along with four labels. Now I have extended to six words and six sticky labels per card. I very much like how busy the cards are looking. I do not think I can add more to the cards. The fullness is just enough. I cannot stop looking and peeling and coming home with labels, so I have to continue making the cards."
$15