Marshall Weber

Order of Scrolling Contents:
Souvenir
'emWeber Project Links
Eleven
Magazine Excavation
House of Ghosts
'emWeber Biography
(link to amazing portrait by Mark Wagner.)

New Bookyn book hot off the press!

Souvenir
2003, edition of 35, 28 pages, 8 inches by 5.5, 10 AP copies numbered 1960-1969, on Mohawk Vellum paper and other archival papers and clothes.
Digital layout and printing by Amy Mees
Book design and production by Mark Wagner
Collage and page design by Marshall Weber
Signed by the artists, with different vintage ‘portraits’ of the artists taken from the original The Galaxy yearbook, in a slipcover.

Souvenir is a deconstruction of The Galaxy, Marion Rudiwitz’s 1969 High School Yearbook (from Francis Lewis High School in Fresh Meadows New York, on Long Island) into an old stamp album. One night early in 1999 I found the yearbook in a pile of (Marion’s?) belongings, which had been tossed onto the curb on Bleecker Street in Greenwich Village. It was an obvious eviction/split quick/death/illness/landlord-threw-stuff-into-the-street situation. I took the book home and my friends and I cruelly laughed at it for a few days. Then in an act of nostalgic piety and apology I spent the next three years tearing the yearbook apart and reassembling it into a vintage stamp album.

Souvenir is a simulacrum of the acclaimed unique collage book of the same name. The original collages were digitally scanned at a high resolution, color corrected so that the high quality Fiery Laser Jet printed pages match the unique book’s pages. It is constructed with cellophane interleaves that visually and tactilely recreate the reading experience of the unique book.

Souvenir is a talismanic antidote to revisionist attempts to diminish the legacy of the 60’s; a decade which still holds a revealing ethical mirror to our present consumer culture’s brutality and arrogance. It recalls a time when college students in the United States had class-consciousness with interests different from those of their parents. The student class had idealistic goals beyond securing a super-sized version of their parent’s lifestyle. That traditional class-consciousness (heir to the ‘Fourth Estate’ of Revolutionary France) survives in fragments, but has been greatly degraded. Oops - there goes the generation gap, easily crossed and taped over by SUV and MTV. (The unique, original collage book of Souvenir is also available.)

In the collections of:
Dartmouth College, NH
Milwaukee Art Muuseum, WI
Minneapolis Institute of the Arts, MN
Stanford University, CA
University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee
University of Minnesota, Minneapolis
Wesleyan University, Middletown, CT

......back in the day..............virtual book..................bible study

write now!.............. reading................ranting..................freezing

...............go to jail.........money problems.............vegetable mind

....................................................................current touring project ...even the birds were on fire...: exhibit and performance.

Eleven Colophon
2002, 72 pages, 9" x 6", edition of 29, digitally printed Fiery color copies on high gloss photographic quality paper. Hand bound with black Laval velvet, includes an audio CD.

A photographic essay by Marshall Weber documenting the visual and text environment of downtown New York City in the weeks after 9/11 with texts by various New York writers.

The book has an innovative structure of alternating vertical and horizontal page-spread orientation. The alternating orientation prompts the reader to rotate the book 90 degrees with each page turn. A small white or black silhouette of the WTC Towers rises from the bottom right hand corner of every page-spread to assist the reader with keeping the proper page orientation. Two recessed bars on the front cover both recall the missing Towers and act as a mnemonic device to remind the reader where the front of the book is located since the direction of page turning varies with the page orientation. The constant re-orientation produces a visceral experience of vertigo that evokes the intensely disorienting atmosphere of 9/11 yet still keeps the reader engaged with the texts and images. In exhibition the Eleven book is mounted on a turntable for easy manipulation by readers.

Accompanied by a CD (set into the back inside cover) produced by Christopher Wilde, featuring texts from the book recited by the authors: writer Ellis Avery, Judith Foster (director of the Neighborhood School, a downtown Manhattan public elementary school), artist/journalist MT Karthik, poet/chanteuse Jane LeCroy, poet/civil rights activist Peter Spagnuolo and M. Weber. A Booklyn publication. Ten copies now available.

Book design: Marshall Weber, Christopher Wilde of Artichoke Yink Press, Brooklyn, NY, and Sara Parkel of Filter Press, Brooklyn, NY.
Page design: Marshall Weber and Alison E. Williams of Doublevision Press, Bisbee, AZ.
Text design: Alison E. Williams.
Binding: Sara Parkel.
Illustration: Isabelle Weber.

In the collections of:
Beineke Library, Yale University, New Haven, CT
Boston Athenaeum, MA
Marjorie Cohn (private), Boston, MA
Dartmouth College, Hanover, NH
Loisiana State University, Baton Rouge
Milwaukee Art Museum, WI
New York University, NYC
Reed College, Portland, Oregon
Smith College, Northampton, MA
Stanford University, CA
University of California, Irvine
University of Colorado, Boulder
Minnesota, Minneapolis
Trinity College, Hartford, CT
University of Vermont, Burlington
Wellesley College, MA

Exhibitions:
Jan./May 2004, Museum of Arts and Design, New York, NY
Sept/Dec. , 2003, Reed College, Portland, Oregon
June/Aug. 2003, Museum fur Angewandte Kunst, Frankfurt, Germany
March/May 2003, University of New Hampshire, Durham
Sept./Oct. 2002, 33&1/3 Gallery/Bookstore, LA, CA

MAGAZINE EXCAVATIONS (Images to be posted soon!)
MAIM, 2003, 14 pages, ed. of 13, 10 3/4" x 8 1/2", a collaboration with Felice Tebbe. Tebbe subscribed to Maxim magazine (a men’s lifestyle publication) for a year and collaged each figure on the cover and then sent them to Weber who formed poetry concrete from the page field. The result is a devastating critique of the magazine's ‘barely’ disguised hideousness.
Collection of:
Smith College, North Hampton, MA,

DKNYFD, 2003, 14 pages, ed. of 13, 10 3/4" x 8 1/2", a collaboration with Felice Tebbe. Weber and Tebbe arrange a collision between a Donna Karin New York fashion pseudo-feminist fashion book (ostensibly a charitable fundraising device) and a burning bonfire (of vanities?) that gorgeously collapses any pretensions of fashionable altruism.

Your Eyes Make You Panic, 2000, 14 pages, ed. of 23, 10 3/4" x 8 1/2". A collaboration with Felice Tebbe. As with MAIM Tebbe subscribed to Cosmopolitan magazine for a year and marker treated each figure on the cover and then sent them to Weber who formed poetry concrete from the page field. The result is an uncomfortable critique of the magazine's representations.
Collection of:
Cornell University, Ithaca, NY
Scripps College, Claremont, CA
Smith College, North Hampton, MA
UCLA Arts Library, CA
University of Washington, Seattle, WA.
University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee
Wellsley College, MA
Wesleyan University, Middletown, CT

The Passion Project
The Magazine
2001, collage, color photocopy, edition of 14, 14 pages, 10 3/4 x 8 1/2 inches.
Fashion is crucified in a transmogrification of modeling pose to anorexic passion, stigmatized models exemplify the ubiquitous bodily sacrifice to literal and metaphoric consumption.
Collection of:
Smith College, North Hampton, MA,
Swarthmore College, PA

The Installation of 12 collage ‘relics’
2000-2001. The collages combine calligraphy and multiple coats of acrylic ink on found, cut and otherwise treated magazine pages. They are modern relics of fashion martyrdom. Various sizes from 8’x10" to 3" x 3". The ‘relics’ are installed in a small (6 foot wide by twelve feet long) crypt-like room that is entirely black and keep cold by a small air conditioner whose sound is masked by a recorded sound loop of the indistinguishable murmurs of a whispering crowd. The collage relics are discreetly spotlighted so that there is no other ambient light. The effect is one of walking through an underground tomb looking at religious relics. As the viewers wander through a World’s Fair/Disney-like recreation of a cold dank Roman crypt they witness fashion icons crucified in a transmogrification of modeling pose to anorexic passion. The stigmatized models exemplify the ubiquitous bodily sacrifice to both literal and metaphoric consumption, while the walk through the tomb re-inscribes the epiphany of religious tourism.

The Nervous System, 2002, multi-media, 2nd ed. of 9, 40 pages, with Kurt Allerslev and Christopher Wilde. Multiplely printed, over-laid, and reprinted with Fiery digital printers, relief press, hand calligraphy, black and white photocopy machines, the Nervous Systemsmells of ink and sweat sweet sour electricity. Lush dense compositions explore the interconnectedness of nerve form, flower structure, letterform and the cognitive processes of human imagination.
Collection of:
Loisiana State University, Baton Rouge
Minneapolis College of Art and Design, MN
Sackner Archive of Visual Poetry, Miami, FL
Scripps College, Claremont, CA
Smith College, Northampton, MA
University of Washington, Seattle
Temple University, Philadelphia, PA
University of California, San Diego
University of California, Santa Barbara
University of Minnesota, Minneapolis

(Magazines Excavations are printed with New Hot Freshness Fiery Electrostatic Full Color Print Process - NHFFEFCPP!)

The
C A T A L O G
The Catalog is a simulacrum mail order fashion catalog of color photocopied collages constructed from the pages of various ‘real’ mail order catalogs and other magazine sources. Published by Artichoke Yink Press

'The Catalog’...is a takeoff of a women’s fashion catalog...it uses photo-collage to give us page after page of models whose clothes appear to be dissolving into the landscapes or cityscapes in which they stand. Occasionally it is the clothes that remain natural while the women’s skin dissolves into the surrounding sky. Slickly produced, the catalog would pass at a glance for the real thing-but its lyrical images, while identifiable as "fashion" photos, are unmistakably metaphors for the dissolution of the subject into the products she consumes. In paying equal attention to the rules of art and politics-including meeting the commercial world on its own terms-this is a piece worthy of Guy Debord." Tom McTaggart, December 5, 1996, "The Stranger", a weekly newspaper from Seattle, WA

The Catalog is in the collections of the:
1. Brooklyn Museum of Art, NY
2. Center for the Book, University of Iowa, Iowa City
3. Gimbel Library of the Parson’s School of Design, NY, NY
4. Golda Meir Library, Milwaukee, Wisconsin
5. Houghton Art Library, Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts
6. Kohler Arts Library, Madison, WI
7. Long Island University Library, NY
8. Museum of Modern Art, NY, NY
9. Newberry Library, Chicago, IL
10. New York Public Library,
11. Spencer Collection, NY, NY
12. New York University, Fales Library,
13. Newark Public Library, New Jersey
14. Rhode Island School of Design Library, Providence
15. Pratt Institute, Brooklyn NY
16. Printed Matter, NY, NY
17. San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, CA
18. Show N’ Tell Gallery, Budapest, Hungary
19. Stanford University, Green Library, Palo Alto, CA
20. Sterling Rare Book Library, Yale University
21. Ubu Gallery, NY, NY
22. Victoria and Albert Museum of Art, London, Great Britain
23. Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, MN
24. Wellsley College, Wellsley, MA

The Catalog has been exhibited at:
2002 – Wellsley College, Wellsley, MA
– Minneapolis Institute of Art, Minnesota
– Center for Book Arts, NYC
2000 – Brooklyn Museum of Art, NY
1998 – Gimbel Library, Parsons School of Design, NYC
1997 – Printed Matter, NYC
1996 – Center on Contemporary Arts, Seattle, Washington

Issue #1, 1996, The blue cover, ed. of 8, 40 pages, 8 1/4 x 10 11/16". Out of print.
Issue #2, 1997, The blue cover, ed. of 50, 40 pages, 8 1/4 x 10 11/16"
Issue #3, 1997, ed. of 11, 56 pages, 8 1/2 x 10 11/16" printed from original collages, with contributions by Christopher Wilde and Mark Wagner. Out of print.
Issue #4, 1998, ed. of 53, 56 pages, 8 1/2 x 10 11/16" with contributions by Christopher Wilde and Mark Wagner.

House of Ghosts, 2000, box – 20 x 9 x 3 inches, book – 11 x 14” inches, a collaboration with Mark Wagner. A unique artists' book and box, metal fixtures, Plexiglas, various papers, calligraphy, chalk, charcoal, collage, drawing, pencil, ink. Concept, documents, pages and text, calligraphy and collage by Weber, binding, book and box construction, by Wagner.

“In House of Ghosts,…the wood assemblage was intended for another sculptural object that didn’t fit, but now houses a unique book residing in the assemblage shaped like a house. The pieces of wood are parts from various lathes, pictures frames and rulers. A book rests inside a box with a Plexiglas window, a found brass fixture in the shape of a skull over the opening of the niche. The concept, documents, text, calligraphy, collage and pages treated with ink, chalk, charcoal and pencil are by Marshall Weber; the binding and box construction by Mark Wagner. The poem is written in a codex book sewn on linen tapes from a variety of papers with hand-drawn architectural plans. The underlying conceit for book and box is the architectural structure of the house as a metaphor for the human body in which a journey of psychic exile and repatriation traverses the interior emotional terrain of the body. The skin acts as pages together with a physiological substratum upon which the story is written, a literal embodiment of a narrative map.” - Constance Woo, Dean of Libraries, Long Island University, unpublished paper for the Rutgers Book Arts Symposium, 2003

Exhibitions:
February, 2003, Third Space Book Arts Gallery, Milwaukee Wisconsin
November, 2003, Rutgers University, Dana Library, NYC
January, 2002, Center for Book Arts, NYC

THE EDITIONED VERSION
A collaboration of Marshall Weber and Christopher Wilde. The edition of House of Ghosts is an exemplary Booklyn publication in that it aesthetically integrates book structure and content into a resonant composition by combining traditional and digital media. The typography and book design was created by Christopher Wilde, and the covers were designed and relief printed by Mark Wagner.

First edition: 2000, 28 pages, 6 x 8 3/4 inches, edition of 50, black and white Epsom ink jet printing over penciled found architectural drawings on onion skin paper. The text is printed backwards on architectural drawings of suburban New Jersey development houses circa 1986. The pliable onionskin paper is then folded over so one sees the ghostly text floating behind the faint drawings. With a relief printed Mylar cover and Japanese stab binding.

Second edition: 2002, 28 pages, 8 x 8 3/4 inches, edition of 35, black and white Epsom ink jet printing on blueprints of the Manhattan water treatment plant. The text is matched and printed backwards on every verso page giving the illusion of transparency to the pages. With a relief printed Mylar cover and Japanese stab binding.

Selected collections:
Amherst College, Northampton, MA, (2nd ed.)
Doug Beube, private, Brooklyn,. NY
California College of Arts and Crafts, Oakland, CA
Clark Library, University of California at Los Angeles
Cornell University, Ithaca, NY
Marjorie Cohen, private, Boston, MA
Middlebury College, Vermont, (2nd ed.)
Museum of Modern Art, NYC
New York University, Fales Library, NY, NY
New York Public Library, NY
Scripps College, California (2nd ed.)
Smith College, Northampton, MA (2nd ed.)
Stanford University, Palo Alto, CA
Sterling Memorial Library, Yale University, New Haven, CT
Swarthmore College, Swarthmore, PA
Syracuse University, NY
Temple University, Philadelphia, PA
University of California at Los Angeles, Clark Memorial Library
University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN
University of Washington, Seattle
University Of Wisconsin, Milwaukee
Wesleyan University, Middletown, CT

Exhibitions:
February, 2003, Third Space Book Arts Gallery, Milwaukee Wisconsin
November, 2003, Rutgers University, Dana Library, NYC
January, 2002, Center for Book Arts, NYC
February, 2001, Silicon Gallery, Brooklyn, New York
March, 2001, Silicon Gallery, Baltimore, Maryland

BIO
Marshall Weber is an interdisciplinary artist best know for his innovative artists’ books and public performance/installation works. His work often explores issues of social justice, peace studies, linguistics and theories of representation. Collected and exhibited internationally Weber was a recent Interdisciplinary Arts Fellow of both the New York Foundation for the Arts and the Intermedia Arts/McKnight Foundation. He has received numerous awards including grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, Art Matters and recently a WNET Public Television, Community Leadership Award for his work as resident artist in the Taller Boricua/Puerta Rican Workshop’s Media Art Lab collaboration with Heritage High School in East Harlem, New York City.

Weber was a co-founder and is a curator in the collection development and exhibition programs of the Booklyn Artists Alliance, a non-profit artist run organization that is one of the largest international associations of handmade/hybrid artist bookmakers and interdisciplinary artist who include books in their media palette. He is an expert on contemporary artists’ books and consults with hundreds of arts and educational institutions and collectors regarding artists’ book collection, exhibition and curriculum development.

Weber has designed curricula, taught and lectured at The School of the Art Institute of Chicago, Teachers College of Columbia University, New York University, The University of Wisconsin at Madison and many other educational institutions. His charismatic and dynamic multi-media lecture presentations on Culture Jamming, the aesthetics of creative dissent, contemporary book arts and the free and independent press, and collaborative arts practive have provoked, perplexed and inspired thousands.

Weber’s artwork work is available through Booklyn and Editions Despalles, Mainz, Germany/Paris France. His essay regarding an artist’s aesthetic of artists books was recently published in "Artists’ Book Yearbook 2003-2005", editor Sarah Bodman, 2003, Impact Press at the Centre for Fine Press Research, University of West England, Bristol, Great Britain.

Weber purchased his MFA at the San Francisco Art Institute in 1981.

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