WINTER COUNT

Portland, Oregon: Printed at Textura Letterpress for the author, 2008. No. 16 OF 30 COPIES, SIGNED by the artist. 241 x 216 mm. (9 1/2 x 8 1/2"). [5] leaves of text.
Unbound as issued in original glassine wrapper. Housed in a custom rust-colored linen clamshell box by Moe Snyder, paper label on upper cover. WITH 41 COLOR PLATES reproducing the artist's embroideries. With prospectus laid in. In mint condition.

Inspired by Native American tradition, this is a beautifully printed meditation on the art of storytelling, craftsmanship, and the passage of time. The bulk of the strictly limited work is composed of 41 unique images (one for every year of the artist's life), based on original embroideries stitched with cotton floss on reclaimed linen. As Greenwood notes in her introduction, "The following images are pulled from ruminations on my life. I have titled each image with the year of origin and a short phrase to note a major event, place, state of mind, or primary activity of the year." The format is based on the Native American tradition of winter counts, in which the tribe would record their histories and events pictographically on buffalo hide. With that practice as inspiration, the present work "is an artist's interpretation of the Sioux tradition to record a personal history using hand-stitched embroidery and letterpress printing." To transfer the original embroideries into print, the artist worked with Inge Bruggeman at Textura Letterpress Printing to create photopolymer plates to create "a unique translation of each embroidery." Anne Greenwood (b. 1967) is a Portland-based interdisciplinary artist interested in textiles, book arts, and community activism. According to her website, "Anne's artwork explores an interest in folk art and speaks of her kinship with the natural world and how this influences her connection to daily life." The book is probably too recently issued to show up in commerce, but we should note that it sold for $1,000 when it was published..