The summer of 2014 saw the beginning of an amazing program:
The Ayatana Artist Research Program hosts artists from around the world while they experience natural phenomena with the guidance of scientists and non-art experts. In this first summer we ran three projects with 10 artists and 14 experts who studied either biology and wildlife or the sky and flight. The artists grew glow in the dark mushrooms, climbed sacred trees, flew stunt kites, looked through microscopes and telescopes, howled at the super moon, chased invasive crabs and some of them jumped out of an airplane all the while learning from the shared knowledge of our crew of experts. The artists have now gone back to their respective homes and built a book.
The artists involved:
Elena Thomas, Washington, USA
The Plan:
Together the books form a collection of 11 volumes: a catalogue and one book made by each of the 10 artists involved. We'd like to give a copy of the collection to each of our experts and to artist's book libraries around the world. But printing is expensive. So we will print more copies and post them to contributors. If you buy a copy you will also be sponsoring the production of a copy to be given as a gift to one of our experts or a public collection.
The Books:
Our collection of pocket sized books includes a 50 page catalogue of all the artists and the experts involved:
Artist's books:
Each artist has made a single simple book. They vary in format and are completely different in content. They are all the same dimensions and stack together tidily. They will all be printed and assembled for you by hand. If you only want one book you can chose which artist's book is for you. Or you can have them all:
You can see more about the artists involved here. You can see more about
Ayatana Artist Research Residencies here.
You can see the
stickers available
here.
You can see the
experts involved
here. (But don't tell them about this, it's a surprise)
We will donate one collection of 11 books to each of these libraries :
If this project is successful we will continue to produce artist's book collections with new artists in the future as part of the regular Ayatana Artist Research Program. If you support us this time you can have the first edition.
What could possibly go wrong?
We have overcome some big obstacles so far but the adventurous nature of Ayatana leads to
adventurous problem solving which means anything can happen and that anything
can be amazing!
We've done all the dangerous stuff and now the only thing left standing in our way to fulfilling this
project is paying for printing. To print the copies we want to give to our experts and to the libraries will cost $390 and $300 to ship them. (and postage to ship to artists,) To print
more for you so we can raise the money to do the first bunch will cost the same again plus a little more to ship internationally. This project represents a theme that threaded through all of our adventures this summer: a composite organism made of many smaller organisms. So it is perfectly suitable for us all to come together to realize this project. Please be part of this Terminal Start with us!
If you can't contribute but know people who like artist books or the intersection of art & science please hit the share button!