An edition of artist’s books written by Edwin Blair. Designed and printed with painter and printer Karoline Schleh. We completed a set of books, titled Patchen Paintings. The books convey Edwin Blair’s experience setting up a show of paintings by proto-Beat poet Kenneth Patchen. The show recounted in the book resulted from lots of back and forth written communication between Edwin Blair and Kenneth Patchen. We designed the book around a short narrative and 50-year-old photos. We researched Patchen and Blair’s correspondence to one another. And we designed the book to visually reference that correspondence. Text from their letters appears on the book’s endpapers. The cover features reproductions of parts of the illustrated envelopes in which Patchen mailed his letters. Inside the book, we feature Edwin Blair’s text, a reproduction of the show’s poster, and a fold-out photo section with photos from show’s opening. The book is risograph- and screen-printed and hand-bound.
