Macy Chadwick, “(Dis)location”

 

Macy Chadwick
Petaluma, California
macychadwick.com

(Dis)location
2022
Limited edition book, letterpress printed (polymer plates and linoleum) with archival inkjet printed collage elements, on Zerkall Book paper
10 x 10 x .5 ” closed. 10 x 130 x 10 ” fully extended.

Artist Statement

The artist’s book, (Dis)location, is a visual narrative communicating the artist’s emotional response to the COVID-19 pandemic through abstract shape and color. In the first few pages of the accordion-style book, geometric shapes in cool blues and greens are aligned and balanced on the page in a lyrical arrangement. As the storyline continues, a few fold-out pages reveal abstracted newspaper columns, and bright, jutting graphics of hot colors. The horizon line then begins to skitter and jump; and imagery becomes increasingly angled, fragmented, and spinning. The back of the book includes a visual interpretation of the news media and the now-familiar barrage of graphics of increasing virus, and infection. Rather than a chronicle of pandemic headlines, data, and dates, (Dis)location employs the universality of color and composition to evoke a world inexorably changed by isolation, sickness and loss.

Imagery was inspired by collages created by the artist during isolation in 2020 and 2021.

News graphics were based on images published by Johns Hopkins magazine and The New York Times. (Dis)location was printed on the letterpress with linoleum blocks and polymer plates, with additional archival inkjet-printed collage elements.