Graham Patten
Medford, Massachusetts
Member for 9 years
in collaboration with
Sarah Smith
White River Junction, Vermont
Member for 24 years
News Cycle, Sarah M. Smith
Museum board, Cheloniidae Rag paper, and Hahnemuhle Bugra paper.
9 x 9 x 3 cm (closed)
19 x 18 x 9 cm (open)
Completed in 2019
For Sale - $1,100
Did you fully plan every aspect of this piece before starting to work on it, or did you make design decisions along the way?
Graham: Since this structure is such a technical challenge, every aspect needed to be planned in advance. But in order to get to the point where I could plan it so thoroughly, I had to experiment with a series of variations, and come to understand the mechanics well. The idea didn't come together in one clean moment, and the result came from following a weird idea where it led, pushing hard to see what the limits of the form were and troubleshooting fails. I'm a heavy planner - but I can't know how to plan unless I've first played around with materials and structural models.
What inspired you to create this work or select this text for your submission?
Sarah: Graham and I started talking about a collaboration involving something based on my daily cartoons and his continuously convoluting carousel structure. His structure shows a number (five in our book) of panels that change or morph four times. The change of seasons would have made life easier and the project go much quicker, but somehow that seemed a bit too obvious. God forbid I keep things simple! It was tricky coming up with an idea that wasn't a linear narrative with a solid beginning and end. I also didn't want to make something strictly decorative either. It needed to be cyclical, and still tell a story of sorts. Because a lot of us have been glued to the news in recent years—perhaps to the detriment of our mental health—I thought of the roller coaster feeling everytime we check the news. It feels like there's a collective reaction to every headline—although different groups might react differently. So I created a five panel crowd—trying to show a variety of people—reacting to the news. They go from indifferent, to shocked, to angry, to elated and back again. Sadly the elated panels seemed the hardest to draw. Between the structure and the images, the hope is readers are compelled to keep moving through the cycle and notice new things each time.
Graham Patten is currently the book conservator at the Boston Athenaeum. He previously served as an Assistant Book Conservator at the Northeast Document Conservation Center (NEDCC). In his artistic pursuits, Graham often focuses on dynamic sculptural and mechanical elements, and enjoys merging these features with innovative book structures. See more of Graham’s work here.
Sarah Smith runs the Book Arts Workshop at Dartmouth College. She received her MFA in Book Arts/Printmaking from University of the Arts, Philadelphia. She taught at various institutions including Montserrat College of Art, Beverly MA, where she created a letterpress studio and BFA concentration in Book Arts. Sarah produces books, broadsides and comics in the realm of nonsense and absurdity. Her work is in collections and with booksellers such as Vamp and Tramp Booksellers; Printed Matter; Moma Artist Book Collection; The Banff Centre; University of Wisconsin; UC, Berkeley; Yale University; Wellesley College; Ringling School of Art & Design; and others. See more of Sarah’s work here.
A video of the continuously convoluting carousel can be viewed on Graham’s website here: https://grahampatten.weebly.com/news-cycle.html
