The Maier Museum of Art
at Randolph College

Rosaire Appel and Barbara Henry – Beyond Question

Maier Museum of Art at Randolph College’s 112th Annual Exhibition
Back to Front: Artists’ Books by Women

Rosaire Appel and Barbara Henry, Beyond Question, Press Rappel: 2019, 8 ½ x 8 ½ in, Courtesy of the artists.

Barbara Henry and Rosaire Appel’s collaborative book Beyond Question interrogates the conventional structure of books and learning.

Artist Rosaire AppelRosaire Appel ARTIST STATEMENT
I am an ex-writer/ visual artist working with interconnections among reading, looking and listening. The vehicles for my explorations are drawings (digital & analog) and books. This includes graphic novellas, abstract comics, asemic writing and asemic music. Since my language is visual, it’s international. I have a long practice of asemic writing (writing with no semantic value) and my work is discussed at length Peter Schwenger’s scholarly study “Asemic The Art of Writing” (2019). Currently I am working with sound. Though sound is invisible, it has structure. I listen for those structures – they produce ongoing revelations.

 

Artist Barbara HenryBarbara Henry BIOGRAPHY
Barbara Henry holds an MFA in painting from American University and studied typography at the University of Iowa with Kay Amert. From 1985 to 2004 she was the Curator of Bowne & Co., Stationers at The South Street Seaport Museum in New York City. In 1980’s, she began producing her own books under the name Harsimus Press. Henry named Harismus Press for Harsimus Cove, a New Jersey neighborhood located across the Hudson River from the southernmost tip of Manhattan. “Harismus” is derived from an Indigenous Leni Lenape name meaning “Crow’s Marsh”. Henry dedicated Harismus Press to the exploration and interpretation of texts in metal and wood type and the relationships between text and illustration. Books she produced have ranged from stories told in linoleum cuts to specimen books of metal and wood type to chapbooks of poetry and literary criticism. Harismus Press is now located in Pottstown, Pennsylvania, by the Manatawny Creek—which is also an Indigenous Lenape name. In addition to her work at Harismus Press, Henry teaches workshops at Center for Book Arts in New York.