Artist's Books
"When I make a book, it is a compositional structure like a mural, novel, play, or motion picture — offering meaning through its sequence of words and images. This kind of book is not a catalog or family album; it is what is referred to as an artist's book. I want the viewer to look slowly and enter my space, rhythm, and mood, turning pages from cover to cover. The quality of the paper, type of binding, the character and style of the font, spacing of words, paragraphs, and sequence of images are as important as the literal content. Holding the book should be a unique aesthetic experience — kinetic, tactile, formal, and personal.
My egalitarian side led me to work with a commercial printer to produce limited signed editions of 500 or 1000 copies, reaching a wider audience at a reasonable price. Over twenty-five years I have produced eight books as publisher of Tortoise Press — creating the images, text, word associations, and design flow myself. It is my exhibit and my statement."
—Stan Kaplan
Some of the Artist's Books by Stanley Kaplan
Images: Between the Lines is an artist's book combining fifteen original linocut prints with text — a deeply personal work rooted in Stan's World War II experiences and his lifelong reckoning with fear, prejudice, and hope.
Zasis — Rob Kaplan, Thomas Chapin, Bill Sloat, and Thad Wheeler — entered every performance with nothing pre-planned. For Stan, watching them was creative fuel. The group inspired a series of prints and this artist's book, a visual record of music made in the moment.
Particles of Light pairs Stan's woodcuts with poetry by Dennis Bernstein — image and word standing on their own, yet related. Stan was past fifty, the poet in his late twenties. The difference in how each saw the life cycle is part of the work.
Two visits to the same New York City restaurant, twenty years apart. The first left murals on the walls. The second became an artist's book.
Stan often returned to past work with new eyes and a single question: "What if?" Sea View grew from a 1975 ship mural commission through pen drawings, etchings with watercolor, and later linocut prints — each step a new answer to that question.
Alongside the black and white edition, Stan made a unique handmade book — color, accordion-bound, opening expansively. The form and the subject in perfect harmony.
September 11th, 2001 — Stan left New York that morning on a solo road trip cross country. Thousands of miles across a country in shock. This is that witness.