Description
Fun Fog Press, Published 2013. Wraps, unpaginated (36 numbered leaves); 28 x 22 cm; illustrated throughout in color with collaged drawings, engravings and photographs printed over red perspective grids.
Rare, out-of-print & unusual books · Since 1997
112
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Catalog notes
Condition & notes
In Very Good condition. Cream speckled paper covers printed in black, light bumping increasing to edges and corners, mild shelf and edge wear. Scuffed patch from sticker removal on front cover below the word UTOPIA. Light scattered soiling to rear cover. Binding tight. Pages clean and unmarked. Thirty-six one-page plays by Barbara Stauffacher Solomon (1928-2024), the graphic designer who invented supergraphics and painted them across The Sea Ranch. Each play occupies the recto of a numbered leaf, the leaf number printed in the artist's hand at the upper left: collaged drawings, engravings and photographs set over her hand-drawn red perspective grids, with five acts of clipped dialogue running along the foot of the page. Casts include bobby pins and apple trees, a professor and a student named Witt and Twitt, a proud cloud lecturing two letterforms on the virtues of Helvetica, and a chorus of sheep narrating the development of The Sea Ranch. A four-page conversation between Solomon in San Francisco and the designer and writer Adrian Shaughnessy in London begins on the verso of the final leaf. Issued by the artist's own Fun Fog Press and long out of print; Printed Matter records an edition of 200. Solomon trained under Armin Hofmann in Basel, taught at Harvard, Yale and Berkeley, and was a fellow of the American Academy in Rome. Contents: A Play on One Page Girl #1; A Play on One Page Girl #2; A Play on One Page Girl #3; Let's Dally in Napa Valley; Let's Play Utopia for a Day; The Witt & Twitt Show #1 through #6; Heaven Sent Helvetica; A Play on Wordplay; Wordplay #1; Wordplay #2; Playing on a Page; Withinvisibility; More Utopias & Myopias; Utopia Myopia #1 through #3; Utopia I Go 4'Ya #1; Myopia I Go 4'Ya; Utopia I Go 4'Ya #2; Utopia Made in Hollywood #1; Upswept to Utopia; Utopia I Go 4'Ya #3; Utopia I Go 4'Ya #4; Utopia Made in Hollywood #2; Utopia Made in Follywood #3; Utopia Made in Hollywood #4; Uprooted to Utopia; Utopia Made in Hollywood #5; Utopia, It's No Go 4'Ya; Why Silly Wordplay All Day?; Why Not Play on a Page?