Ed Hutchins

I received some correspondence from Ed Hutchins in Salem NY recently - his characteristic envelopes covered with stickers and interesting US stamps always look so joyful and are a delight to receive.

One of the things in the envelope was his business card for his collection.  Ed always manages to make everything seem like fun.

I was thrilled to see that a book of mine in his collection, Lost in a Million Dead End Streets was featured in the centrefold.   The title is a phrase from David Bowie's song Changes.  These words always fascinated me and conjured up many images.

Ed Hutchins' work was very influential on me and my further work after I first saw his book World Peace, dated 1991 and which I saw in publications in the early 1990's.  

 It was presented as a circular book made up of four quarter circle books.

Image from Book Dynamics by Ed Hutchins

 I experimented with sculptural books and cube shaped books, but I enthusiastically embraced the idea of quarter circle books with folded pages based on Ed's structure.

My first attempt was a little book in 1995 called How the Sun was made.

From then on, the folded circular page became much used in my work and was a wonderful structure for experimentation.

I created the structure of Lost in a Million Dead End Streets by first making a multipage quarter circle book.   I stood the quarter circle book up on its point with the first and last pages lying down flat and the pages fanned to form the middle spine of my new book.  I made a number of additional circular pages folded into the same quarter circle structure and these pages were then inserted into the folds of the opened standing book with an equal number of pages inserted on each side of the central structure.  After attaching these to the initial quarter circle book, I had created the structure of a semi circle book which also displays as a dome.

My artist's statement for this book was 

'The structure and format reflect being 'lost' and going round in circles, never reaching the end destination. The text reveals that the goal of the 'journey' is not to arrive, but to always be 'lost', searching and learning and open to new experiences.

I made 6 copies of Lost in a Million Dead End Streets between 2008-2010.  All are in collections - Ed Hutchins, Bank Street Arts, Sheffield UK, Linea d'arte Officina Creativa, Naples Italy (who re-exhibited their copy at a Biennale del Libro d'Artista in 2017) and three in private collections.

Thank you, Ed Hutchins, for your friendship, inspiration, encouragement and creativity.