Long Beach Artists Present Pages from Their Books

LONG BEACH, CA: During October is Arts Month, guest curator Jean Clad has selected works by four Long Beach-based artists with distinguished careers for the exhibit, Leaves: Pages from Artists’ Books at Utopia Restaurant in the East Village. Visual and literary art works by Slater Barron, Terry Braunstein, Pia Pizzo, and Sue Ann Robinson will be on view at Utopia Good Food & Fine Arts, between October 13 and December 10, 2007. The public is invited to meet the artists and curator on Saturday, October 13, from 4 to 6 pm at the opening reception for the exhibition and learn more about the richness and variety of the Artist’s Book format.

      All four of the artists have exhibited their art works at galleries and museums nationally and internationally—including together in Italy and southern California, and at the Long Beach Museum of Art. While all four artists have worked in a variety of media over the years, the works on view at Utopia are mixed media artists’ books or pages from artists’ books. Pia Pizzo makes “wordless” books in which the form, color and paper comprise the symbology of the book’s meaning. Terry Braunstein, whose artworks also include public sculptures in Long Beach and her largest book to date at the Cerritos Library, uses photomontage images gathered from media all around us. Slater Barron has created a visual and poetic book, Remembering the Forgetting, whose pages present her experience of her parents’ Alzheimer’s disease. Sue Ann Robinson works in series and presents a selection of pages from three of her series: a manuscript about oak trees; pages from a contemporary book of hours about cowboys, and, her newest series, an archeological exploration of memory with her mother, Peg Robinson. 

At the opening reception, Slater Barron will sign copies of her book, Remembering the Forgetting, the story of the art she made to help her cope with her parents’ Alzheimer’s disease. Order a copy of the book in advance on line at www.lulu.com, or purchase a copy at the reception on October 13. If ordering on line, please allow two weeks for delivery.

      Terry Braunstein collects found images from old magazines, encyclopedias, maps, and dollhouse furniture with other bric-a-brac at flea markets, yard sales, and used bookstores. These form the archives of materials that Braunstein draws upon for her photomontage-based work. She transforms the issues of daily life and personal memory into imagery about the larger forces at work in the universe and human history in her visual books.

      Pia Pizzo makes wordless books whose silence speaks volumes. The viewer focuses on the light and shadows created in the empty spaces of the book pages construction. The quality of light raking across the surface of the pages causes vibrations as the light changes with the passage of time. Her work reflects what she describes as the “music of silence.”

      Sue Ann Robinson’s work is often inspired by the tradition of illuminated manuscripts in which the words and images are nearly indivisible from each other. The initial page from her series about oak trees—Quercus Manuscript--was first printed in the California Year of the Oak and published as an insert in the Hudson River Valley News, New York. It inspired a series of art works culminating in the Library Fellows Artist’s Book Award from the National Museum of Women in the Arts. The exhibit, Leaves: Pages from Artists’ Books also includes the first page of Robinson’s latest series in collaboration with her mother, Peg Robinson.

Additional information and biography available on request.

Photographs of the art works are available on request.

Utopia Good Food & Fine Arts

Mon-Fri: Noon to 9:30 pm

Sat: 5 to 10:30 pm & Sun: 5 to 9:30 pm

445 E. First Street, Long Beach Ca, 90802

Phone: 562.432.6888 www.utopiarestaurant.net