Linda Sampson-Talleur, Cathy Ledeker

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

Linda Samson-Talleur, Cathy Ledeker (vignettes and calligraphy), The Phoenix, 2004, linocut, photoengraving, letterpress, box: 8 3/16 x 8 ¼ x 1 3/16 in.; book: 7 ½ x 7 ½ x  ½ in. Courtesy of the artists.

In 1999 Talleur was commissioned to make the Phoenix Award for the city of Lawrence, Kansas. The award took the form of a limited edition of eight copies of an artists’ book entitled The Phoenix, an excerpt from the Exeter Book with a translation in English by Benjamin Thorpe, edited by Richard Clement with calligraphy and illuminations by Cathy Ledeker and linoleum cuts by Linda Samson Talleur.

“Excerpts from the Codex Exoniensis (circa 1100, Anonymous, in Anglo-Saxon) and an English translation (1842, Benjamin Thorpe) with vignettes, calligraphy, and relief cuts. The calligraphed Anglo-Saxon excerpts appear on the inner 2.5 x 2” concertina that connects the larger panels on which the relief cuts appear. A non-traditional woven format unites the illustrations and text of the book. The structure enables the reader to handle the book in a traditional manner, paging double page spreads, or to remove the last tab from the spine and view the extended pages to reveal the image of a rising Phoenix on the recto and descending Phoenix on the verso.”—Publisher’s website, 3/02/2009.

BIOGRAPHY

Linda Samson-Talleur earned her BFA in Printmaking from the University of Kansas and an MFA in Book Arts from the University of Alabama in 1986. She teaches drawing, letterpress, and book arts at the University of Kansas and prints limited edition books under the LA Ginestra.

Linda was awarded a Fulbright Fellowship in 1986 to study with master printer Alessandro Zanella at Edizioni Ampersand in Verona, Italy. During her Fellowship year Zanella and Talleur hand set and printed a new edition of Un coup de dés jamais n’abolira le hasard by Stéphane Mallarmé following the parameters of the first edition of the poem in the “Nouvelle Reveue Français”, with a translation in Italian by Mario Cucchi, and a note by the translator, with four illustrations by Jacques Vernière. In addition, Talleur and Zanella published Two Poems/Due Poesie by Dana Gioia with a translation in Italian by Massimo Bacigalupo with illustrations by Linda Samson-Talleur.