WORDS & PICTURES: ARTIST’S BOOKS BY DIANE FINE

WORDS & PICTURES: ARTIST’S BOOKS BY DIANE FINE

March 1 – June 30, 2017

Diane Fine is a distinguished book artist, printmaker, and educator. Under her imprint Moonkosh Press the artist has produced over twenty-five limited edition books that explore the search for meaning, and speak to the need for beauty in our lives. Her rich and imaginative books combine letterpress printing with a variety of print media such as lithography, relief printing, and etching. Employing color, pattern, symbols, and inventive structures, Fine’s books address topics such as feminism, breast cancer, ritual, nature, solitude, and memory.

Diane Fine is the invited speaker for the Third Annual Bernstein Book Arts Lecture. Her public talk, Stories: the Moonkosh Press, will be held on March 14, 2017 in Memorial Library, room 126 at 11:30 a.m.  She will also lead a workshop for art students during her visit.

Fine began the Moonkosh Press in 1985 while studying printmaking at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.  She took classes in book arts from Walter Hamady and worked as an assistant printer at the Silver Buckle Press.  She received her M.F.A. in Graphics in 1988.  Work has been done with UW-Madison alumni Tracy Honn, Mario Laplante, Pati Scobey, Walter Tisdale, and Katherine Kuehn: “Collaboration with fellow artists, part of the tradition of printmaking and book arts, has been an essential part of my learning process and production.”  Her solo and collaborative work featuring books and broadsides are on view in this exhibit.   

Words, stories, and humor play a central role in her art.  The name Moonkosh is a phonetic spelling of the Hungarian town from which her maternal grandfather, a talented storyteller, emigrated.  Her books include original writing, Yiddish and African proverbs, Buddhist texts, archival material, and the work of contemporary poets such as Thomas J. Braga, Dan Giancola, and Eli Goldblatt.

Her keen power of observation and rich imagination informs her eloquent visual language.  Fine’s work speaks to life’s dichotomies: male and female, good and evil, grief and healing, serenity and anxiety, growth and decay, ambiguity and clarity.

Diane Fine: “My prints, books and drawings are about the poetry of solitude and memory. They are about the comfort and poignancy of beauty, reminiscence and longing. Searching for and creating this comfort are essential human endeavors. What we make and what we find are necessarily juxtaposed to the pain and suffering of loss. The rich morsels that we collect help us to live an existence in which answers may not be forthcoming to our most fundamental questions.”

For almost thirty years, she has been a faculty member at the State University of New York-Plattsburgh where she teaches printmaking and book arts.  She exhibits her work regularly, has taught workshops around the country, and was recently artist-in-residence at the Penland School of Crafts in North Carolina.

Fine’s books are held by many institutions including the Museum of Modern Art, the Victoria and Albert Museum, the Newberry Library, and Yale University.  The University of Wisconsin-Madison is the largest institutional repository of her book art.

The exhibit runs from March 1 – June 30, 2017.

Image: Diane Fine.  Beautiful Little Bird.  Plattsburgh, NY: Moonkosh Press, 1999.

————————

The Kohler Art Library regularly exhibits materials from its collections, such as artist books and illuminated manuscript facsimiles. Occasionally the library exhibits materials from other sources.