James Siena, New York, NY

Sequence One, 2010

Click here to view a film of this book.

“For quite some time I’d been turning around in my head the idea of making relief prints using sections of lumber rather than planks of wood. I had already used sections of quarter inch pine to lay out an image on a stone at ULAE (Universal Limited Art Editions), but it was only for layout purposes—seeing the wood laid on the stone was probably the first moment when it occurred to me to use wood as line, or wood as move.

“Flying Horse Editions invited me to make a print with Master Printer Larry Cooper, and this project came to mind as something that could be worked on indirectly—wood could be cut according to a plan, much like an architect’s elevation. When I found out that Larry is also a Master Bookbinder, wheels started to turn. I’d just finished a book with Marjorie Welish at Granary Books that included some assembly / disassembly drawings, images that carry out the process of their making through a group of images in sequence, or a sequence of images on one page.

“It had been my original intention to make the single print, by itself; single sided, with numbers “explaining” the sequence of moves that determine the formation of the image. But once the book idea came along, it was just too good an opportunity to pass up: make a continuous folded book with all of the moves represented in a cumulative sequence, going forward on one side and ‘undoing’ itself in reverse colors on the other side. And once that was determined, it was clear that the single print had to be double sided, in order to reflect the idea of the book.”
—James Siena, April 8, 2010

James Siena (b. 1957, California) received his BFA from Cornell University, Ithaca, NY in 1979. Siena's work has been featured in over 55 group exhibitions, including the 2004 Whitney Museum of American Art Biennial. The recipient of multiple honors and awards, James Siena has been awarded The New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowship in Painting (1994), the Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation Biennial Competition Award (1999), and an award in Art from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, New York (2000). Siena lectures and teaches at numerous institutions throughout the United States, including Virginia Commonwealth University, Richmond (1999, 2002); Skidmore College, Saratoga Springs, NY (2000); School of Visual Arts, New York (2003-2008); San Francisco Art Institute (2003); and the Cleveland Institute of Art, OH (2004). Since 2005 he has been a member of the Corporation of Yaddo.

Siena's work can be found in several public collections including: Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY; Museum of Fine Art, Boston; The Museum of Modern Art, New York; the Philip Morris Collection; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco; and the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York. He is represented by PaceWildenstein Gallery in New York City.

Collections:
Stanford University, Palo Alto, CA
Cornell University, Ithaca, NY

2010, 38 pages
Edition of 20 signed copies, plus 3 artist’s proofs and 3 printer’s proofs.
36 relief prints from multiple oak blocks, printed on both sides of the Masa paper pages.
Printed by Larry Cooper, assisted by Greg Leibowitz, at Flying Horse Press, Orlando Florida.
Binding by Book Lab II, San Marcos, Texas.

Download a copy of James Siena's Curriculum Vitae here.

This page is maintained by Marshall Weber.