Notes on the Creation of Broder by Anna Reckin and Paulette Myers-Rich

By Paulette Myers-Rich

The Collaborative Process
          My introduction to Anna's poetry was through a mutual acquaintance asking if Anna could send me a manuscript for consideration for a fine press book. After an initial reading, I wrote to Anna expressing interest, but I couldn't do anything for a year as I was in production with a project. Four months passed and I read the work again. Anna's poetry resonated with me in such a visual way, that it inspired a set of photographs tied to each poem in the suite titled Broder. We met and agreed to join in a collaboration that would bring the photographs and poems together in a fine press artists book.

About the poems
          The title Broder, with its proofreader's 'transpose' mark in the word to make Border is a play on the French word to embroider, and that this work usually occurs along the edges of a piece. The poems look at specific types of embroidery and lacework, challenging the idea the stitching is simply "surface ornament." The various kinds of openwork described - drawn-thread work, broderie anglaise, and fagoting (decorative bridging between strips of cloth) are all concerned with opening up the woven surface. Embroidery is seen as stereotypically female and docile, but the techniques described here piercing, binding, etc. - speak more of violence than gentility. The underlying theme of the violence that enters women's lives through the domestic arena is central to the poems and the images.

About the photographs
          These images are meant to be seen alongside their respective poems and are not intended to stand alone. However they are not merely illustrations of the poems, but responses to them.

          I set up the photographs from items in my collection of fine linens that I've saved from boxes of rags I get from St. Vincent de Paul's for cleaning up my press. Although these beautiful old pieces of needlework are worn, slightly stained or ripped, and seen as unsuitable to sell in the shop, I would never use them as rags, so I keep them in a cupboard in my studio. The fact that these linens were cast off this way brings yet another equation for women's lives in to the work.

          The series of photographs begins with an image that is soft, reflective and gentle; an unformed piece of weaving, and moves through various stages to the final image of a slash and the open blades of a scissors alongside torn threads, evoking both female anatomy and the sharp-edged violence that is the underlying theme of the poetry suite. These abstract, beautiful images and poems draw the reader in and slowly reveal the dual nature of women's domestic lives.

Physical Description of the Book
          I was also compelled by the formal qualities of Anna's poems. Her attention to the spacing and the quality of her lines attracted me as a letterpress printer who sets type by hand. We are both sensitive to the look of the page and how the visual informs the text. I designed the book in a square format which fit the poems and gave me a neutral space in which to work.

          The book is an accordion format comprised of five images with five poems, alternating between image and text. The pages are individual sheets, 6 x 6" joined by strips of black and white reversible Unryu paper, with the black serving as a border between the pages. The book is hound on black linen cloth covered boards, with a black flax slip sleeve over the book. The sleeve has a title label affixed to the front and the colophon on the back. A linen covered clamshell box houses and protects this book. The images are B/W duotones printed with archival inks. The text is handset type in Perpetua and letterpress printed.

          Broder was the winner of the 2000 Minnesota Book Award in the Fine Press Category and included in the Recent Acquisitions exhibit at the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, and in 15 Years, Faculty and Friends exhibit at the Minnesota Center for Book Arts at Open Book, Minneapolis.

          Paulette Myers-Rich is a photographer and poet producing fine press artists books using traditional letterpress printing methods in combination with digital tools and technology. She can be reached at Traffic Street Press. 250 3rd Avenue North #300, Mpls., MN 55401 or at pmrich22@hotmail.com