Thursday, February 13th, 2025
Time: 6 pm PST (note early start time)
Online presentation; preregister HERE.
Scott McCarney is an artist, designer and educator who has been closely affiliated with book arts and independent publishing for over 40 years. His practice is varied but the results of his research and making always find a resolution in book form, which he finds to be one of the most intimate forms of expression. Inspired by Mallarmé’s aphorism, "Everything in the world exists in order to end up as a book,” Scott's VisualBooks incorporate the frequently overlooked details of day-to-day life reflecting our human condition.
Since the pandemic Scott has been contemplating the importance of friends, family and community in the inception, creation and distribution of his work. At his talk, Scott will present a cross section of his artwork related to and informed by this theme.
Memory Loss, 1988, was inspired by a traumatic brain injury suffered by the artist’s brother in 1986. The accordion structure combines fractured images and texts drawn from medical literature about head injury with personal photographs and correspondence.
Coming to Terms: An Abecedarium, 2012, is composed of portraits of the artist printed on page spreads matched to terms that have resonance to the time, place, or posture of the photograph. The vocabulary terms from the 1943 Psychiatric Word Book reflect the influence of Freudian theory on the field at that time, especially in the understanding of human sexuality. The melding of language and image is part of an ongoing autobiography, reflecting the shifting views that culture and science have on the construction of personhood.
T/HERE, 2018, is an indigo digital facsimile of a 1981 one-of-a-kind book made with Haloid Xerox prints, color Xerox copies, rubber stamps, stencils and collage elements about place, memory, time and longing.
Scott McCarney received his formal design training at Virginia Commonwealth University in the 1970s, and earned an advanced degree in visual studies from the University at Buffalo/Visual Studies Workshop in the 1980s. His work spans many media, from offset and digital printing to sculptural and site-specific installations. His bookworks can be found in the collections of The Museum of Modern Art, New York; Victoria & Albert Museum, London; and Yale University Art Gallery, among others. His work is shown internationally (Sao Paulo, Brazil; Melbourne, Australia; Baku, Azerbaijan) as well as closer to home (Hallwalls, Buffalo NY; Everson Museum, Syracuse NY; Memorial Art Gallery, Rochester NY). His teaching and lecturing itinerary is varied and eclectic, carrying the banner of artists books to Australia, New Zealand, Korea, Mexico, and South America. He retired in 2020 after 16 years of teaching in the College of Art and Design at Rochester Institute of Technology. Since then he regularly gives virtual workshops for the Center for Book Arts in New York.
For a meeting on St. Valentine's Day eve, Scott said an online presentation would be great, because there would be no danger of chocolatey fingerprints on the books. :-)