Inge Bruggeman – Active Reading Series

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

Inge Bruggeman, Active Reading Series 1: No one wants to play the victim no one when there is a gun involved and blue, INK-A! Press: 2015, letterpress printed from handset metal type on butcher paper, modular shelving, 3 x 12 x ¾ in. Courtesy of Inge Bruggeman

https://ingebruggeman.com/Active-Reading-Series-1/

No one wants to play the victim no one when there is a gun involved and blue, is an artist book in a long accordion format that is intended to be read while walking. The long prose poem within the book is letterpress printed from handset type on butcher paper in an edition of 15 copies. To experience it fully, the work is installed on 36’ of 3’ custom modular shelving so that the reader is physically engaged with the reading process.

“No one wants… is the first artist book in my Active Reading Series. This series of work will be made up of 3-4 artist book projects investigating the physical nature of reading the material book. The project explores how we digest, retain, and embody information. Each artist book in the series will attempt to engage the reader physically in different ways, underscoring the idea that reading a physical, material object in a particular way can connect the reader profoundly to its content. It attempts to realize the book’s potential for a heightened reading experience, creating an embodiment of the text through an exaggerated physical experience with a material object. In this particular instance walking with the poem sets a different pace for the reader and the reader’s attention is focused quite differently when engaged with the text in this way.” ~ Inge Bruggeman

Inge Bruggeman, Active Reading Series 2: Deposits, INK-A! Press: 2018, accordion-style artist book letterpress printed from handset metal type and collagraphs, handmade ladder, speaker/sound element, Asuka paper, sand paper, 3 ½ x 13 x 2 ½ in. Courtesy of Inge Bruggeman

https://ingebruggeman.com/Active-Reading-Series-2

There were no fences, just pine and sage, blue
sky and melting snow.

We found the stream where spearmint grew and
rubbed it on our wrists like perfume.

Weekend mornings, the floors were always sticky
with soda. I swept up popcorn and wrappers. The
empty theater was eerie but the stage was mine.

I went to the carnival with Gloria. We drank vod-
ka, rode the rides, and got sick in the porta-pot-
ties. Oh, and a man asked if we wanted to go on
the mustache ride.

The room was tiny, but life was expansive. I put
my groceries outside on the window ledge to
keep them cold, sometimes they froze and oc-
casionally they were lost to the courtyard below.

There was a curve in the metro track, I watched
as a man walked too close and was pulled under
the train.

It was pitch black, no change in color from the
dirt road to the night sky, so I walked, shuffling
along with my hands out-stretched in front of me.

There were cockroaches everywhere, big ones,
little ones, even in the stereo. And then there was
the dog, it chewed up everything you loved.

I had the best meal of my life on that hill, craw-
fish boil with all the go-alongs. He had the fish
market’s number on speed dial. He was not okay
though, and he died of a drug overdose shortly
after.

A still, dirty, tan-orange sky, too quiet.

We looked up at the smoking hole in one of the
towers. “Do you think it was an accident? Looks
like a helicopter hit it.”

He was lying there on a table in the funeral home,
a shell, and his nose was all wrong, not his at all.

BIOGRAPHY

Inge Bruggeman’s work revolves around the idea of the book — the book as object, artifact, and cultural icon. She is focused on the r(evolutionary) nature of the book: in that it is both a technology and an artifact in constant evolution along with the people that interact with it. Bruggeman’s work investigates our personal and collective relationship to the shifting role of the book, print media and text in our world today. She is assistant professor in the Art Department at the University of Nevada, Reno, where she is also area head of the Book and Publication Arts program. Her work can be found in collections at the British Library, Stanford University, the Fogg Art Museum (Harvard University), Columbia University, and the Library of Congress, among many others.