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The Graven Images suite
(consisting in its entirety of twelve folios, plus an introductory
poem and image) is the result of a poet and a graphic artist working
together for an intense 10-day period in January, 1977. At this
time all the images were created and transferred onto blocks, to
be engraved by Bernard Solomon over the next few months. Our common
yet different Jewish heritage, and the elements from that tradition
which both of us had been applying to our separate art forms, produced
an important unifying factor. We began with poems by Rochelle Ratner
and, through discussion (in retrospect) of what had been attempted
in the writing, we proceeded to the point where we could replace
the words as much as possible with a visual image, implying the
idea conveyed in the written poem. Our intent was to present the
viewer with a prism through which he/she may receive multiple images.
In many pieces, the visual poem differs significantly from the written
text, and frequently borrows from another, related, text. It approaches
the mystical realm equated with Kaballistic thought and the pyrimidal
consequence reminiscent of numerology, in which the whole becomes
greater than the sum of its parts, by an almost geometric progression.
It's this concept which we feel is at the base of all successful
collaboration.
Graven
Images was the first of four collaborations between Bernard
Solomon and Rochelle Ratner. Other collaborations include Spiritual
Leprosy reprinted in Hand Book 3, 1979); St. Julian,
The Boxwood Press, 1984; An Artist's Haggaddah, The Boxwood
Press, 1991. These hand-printed books have been exhibited at several
museums and colleges throughout the United States, Germany, and
Holland. Other collaborative projects
had been planned, but were cut short by Mr. Solomon's untimely death
in 1995
Graven Images copyright
1977 by Bernard Solomon
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