Book Objects and Loose Page Sculptures
In the early 1960s, published by Something Else Press, Knowles composed the Notations book of experimental composition with John Cage and Coeurs Volants and a print with Marcel Duchamp. She also traveled and performed throughout Europe, Asia and North America. In 1963, Knowles produced one of the earliest book object, a can of texts and beans called the Bean Rolls. In 1967, Knowles and James Tenney produced the computerized poem The House of Dust. A sound installation for a House of Dust public sculpture was produced by Max Neuhaus.
In 1967, Knowles created the Big Book, an 8-foot-tall (2.4 m) book of environments organized around a spine, which opened at the Frankfurter Buchmesse and toured through Europe. The book was eventually destroyed. In 1982, with the help of Franklin Furnace, Knowles produced a second large-scale book called The Book of Bean. Several pages of this book can be found at Museo Vostell in Extremadura, Spain. In 1985, Knowles created a smaller book of tactile languages called A Finger Book of Ancient Language. This book consisted of seven 11-inch-high (280 mm) pages all in braille and was shown at the Lighthouse for the Blind in New York. She has also produced and written several books of experimental text and poetry.
Knowles' 1983 book Loose Pages, originally produced in collaboration with Coco Gordon, consisted of pages made for each part of the body. In her other page sculptures, the audience physically stands in the page and enters it with one or more body parts. Her 1989 Mahogany Arm Rest and 1992 We Have no Bread invited the viewer to engage directly with their four to five meter pages.
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Famous quotes containing the words book, objects, loose and/or page:
“When we read a story, we inhabit it. The covers of the book are like a roof and four walls. What is to happen next will take place within the four walls of the story. And this is possible because the story’s voice makes everything its own.”
—John Berger (b. 1926)
“If the Christ were content with humble toilers for disciples, that wasn’t good enough for our Bert. He wanted dukes’ half sisters and belted earls wiping his feet with their hair; grand apotheosis of the snob, to humiliate the objects of his own awe by making them venerate him.”
—Angela Carter (1940–1992)
“Flick stands tall among the idiot pumps—
Five on a side, the old bubble-head style,
Their rubber elbows hanging loose and low.”
—John Updike (b. 1932)
“Any man who can write a page of living prose adds something to our life, and the man who can, as I can, is surely the last to resent someone who can do it even better. An artist cannot deny art, nor would he want to. A lover cannot deny love.”
—Raymond Chandler (1888–1959)