The Knitter's Hand and the Telegrapher's Fist
Statement from The Print Center:
Denise Bookwalter: The Knitter’s Hand and the Telegrapher’s Fist brings together new prints and artist’s books by the Florida State University Art Professor and Director of Florida State University’s artists book press, Small Craft Advisory Press. Bookwalter’s works come out of her extensive research into a wide range of topics, from experimental machines to origami, and take experimental forms based on book structures and packaging.
Bookwalter’s practice is noted for its intriguing and unexpected approaches to the forms, structures and processes related to bookmaking. Her diverse approaches in recent works have included burning text into the page, creating 3-D models within the pages of a book and utilizing modular systems to construct complex works. At the same time, Bookwalter’s work involves exhaustive research into highly specific subjects, including the biographies of almost-forgotten early aviators. “The disregarded records, figures or facts,” Bookwalter says, “merge and become the atypical moments that facilitate my knowledge of materials, technology and objects. These moments nourish intuition and lead to invention. The combination of research, information and play is the subject of my work.” The title of the exhibition refers to the translation of instructions and codes into handmade objects. “Knitters follow coded knitting patterns but each hand will produce a slightly different object,” Bookwalter says, “When sending telegraphs each operator had a distinct style called the telegrapher’s fist. It is the variation of the human hand in interpreting these codes and languages that inspire my work for this show.”
