FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
May 29, 2008 - Through July 5, 2008

Ruth Laxson; Life is a Page
May 29 - July 5, 2008
Opening Reception:
Thursday May 29, 6:00 p.m. - 9:00 p.m.

Marcia Wood Gallery presents a solo exhibition by Atlanta artist Ruth Laxson. Laxson was born in 1924 in Roanoke, Alabama, and is one of Atlanta's most beloved artists and is recognized as one of the nation's preeminent artists’ bookmakers. The upcoming exhibition surveys a career that began upon Laxson’s entry into the Atlanta College of Art in 1958. The exhibition will survey her significant body of artists’ books that comment on her reaction to contemporary culture, and debut her latest book, Ideas of God. This will be Laxson’s 30th artists’ book, beginning in 1980 with the book Power Poem. Ideas of God, published in 2008, is an edition of 100, 38 pages, 11 x 8.5 inches, handset type on a Challenger flatbed press, with drawings, and a hardbound black cover. Also on view will be 15 new drawings in Laxson’s recent ongoing series, God Dolls, as well as selections of her sculptures, paintings, mail art, and prints. A catalog will accompany the exhibition.

Laxson's work is in the collections of major museums and artists’ book collections in the U.S. and internationally, including the Museum of Modern Art, NYC, The Victoria & Albert Museum and Tate Museum, London, Yale University Fine Art & Architecture Library, Getty Center Museum, CA, Sackner Collection, Miami, the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, the National Museum of Women in the Arts, the High Museum Atlanta, and the Museum of Contemporary Art of Georgia, among many others.
In 2003, the Fleet Library at Rhode Island School of Design (RISD) received a major gift of Laxson's bookmaking process archives and added over 20 of her artists’ books to their collection. Simultaneous with Laxson's exhibition at Marcia Wood Gallery, the Fleet Library at RISD will mount a separate exhibition entitled, IT IS UP TO US IF WE GO ON AS IT IS; Ruth Laxson’s Persistent Muse. Dates for the RISD exhibition are May 9 through July 3. Contact; Laurie Whitehill Chong, Special Collections Librarian, 401-709-5927, lwhitehi@risd.edu

Ruth Laxson’s earliest work – in sound poetry, sculpture, drawings and etchings – was deeply rooted in language as a working material. Thus, in the early eighties, artists’ books became a natural repository for her ideas and consideration of the contemporary human condition. In the tradition of Concrete Poetry and Visual Writing, Laxson considers the materiality of the written and typed word and it’s deployment on the page. Using a variety and mixture of typefaces, Laxson creates visual structures – one might even say drawings – out of words. (Printed Matter Inc, 2008) As communication is a major theme of Laxson’s work she uses language as a working material. Automatic writing and pattern poetry are the hallmarks of Laxson’s artistic style as she merges text and image into text as image. The artist states “I hope to test the language for meaning and merge text and image in the spirit as the surrealists. But I want to take it a step farther to text as image.” Exquisite, meticulous craftsmanship and playful yet thorough exploration, are the hallmarks of Laxson’s work. She combines handset type on a Challenger letterpress with handwritten text, drawing, etching, stitching, layering, chine colle, ink, watercolor and more in perfectly hand bound small editions.

In the publication “The Book as Art; Artists’ Books from the National Museum of Women in the Arts”, 2007, curator Krystyna Wasserman writes in the introduction to the Historians section, in which Ruth Laxson’s books are included, “Artists’ books are a common container for political thought and historical record”. Indeed Ruth Laxson’s concern with reflecting our contemporary society and her interest in humanity is the inspiration for a profound body of work that over 25 years has become a provocative, humorous and wise record of our times. Laxson always speaks her mind on a variety of topical contemporary subjects with “political, social and aesthetic statements which are ‘right on’, apt for today, and apt for tomorrow”. (Judith Hoffman, UMBRELLA 20/2.) Hoffman also writes of Laxson’s artists’ book, Letters to the Ether/Other, 1996, “This book is exquisite, a true tour de force for anyone at any time. ‘From silence to lang-wij 2 turth _A slipper slope of beliefs—with a flying horse galloping off’ -- Wow! A visionary artist with her feet on the ground and her hands on the press!” Laxson works with mathematics, physics and music in her exploration of language and meaning. From quantum physics in her artists’ book, [Ho+Go]=It, 1986, which is included in the “The Book as Art”, and about which Laxson writes “… intense interest in quantum physics… based on the scientific assumption that all matter is in motion. This book works on the premise that interaction is the only physical reality.”to time and desire in Little Tyrannies, 1990, to the automobile and the destruction of culture in Wheeling, 1992, to the mythology of beginning in Retell the Tale, 1997, to philosophy, aging and inspiration in Muse Measures, 1999, to language and consciousness in Mythos/Chronos/Logos, 2000, to language and technology in A Hundred Years of; Lex Flex, 2003, to religion in her newest book Ideas of God, 2008, Laxson has said she considers her work “an attempt to restore some of the texture and grain of life being flattened by cyberspace.”