EDITIONS 1999 - 2015
In Mexico: in the garden of Edward James
Helen Douglas, In Mexico: in the garden of Edward James, 2014. 145x145mm double sided concertina, 92 pp in full colour, printed offset, with green foiled card covers. Edition 300, Price £30. ISBN 978 0 9550987 3 4.
This concertina opens in vibrant colour to reveal in progressive spreads of two, four and six pages a rich sensory exploration of Edward James' surreal jungle garden Las Posaz, in Mexico. Lush vegetation intertwines with the constructed buildings and staircases of James' imagination and with Douglas' own, in experiencing this garden and the rich culture of Mexico.
Within the book the abundant garden is interwoven on the page with decorative threads from Mexican embroidery and feather work. Patterns of leaves are echoed by cut paper craft whilst the delicate encrustation of flora and fauna is enriched with ancient Indian beadwork.
With the unfolding pages, from ground to tree tops, the viewer can ascend with the staircases and flit with the butterflies of the garden, suspending gravity and disbelief, venturing through gates and windows to boughs and fern vaults in the sky. And in so doing experience, within the small intimacy of book, something of the unfolding immensity of the garden and its timeless fusion of earth and paradise, real and surreal.
HAIRST
Rab Wilson, Helen Douglas HAIRST, published by Friends of Ettrick School & Weproductions, 2015. 48pp, 115 x 225mm, Edition 500 Retail £12, ISBN 978-0-9550987-0-3
This slim elegant book HAIRST combines poems by Rab Wilson, written while on the first James Hogg Creative Residency in Ettrick valley, with images by Helen Douglas. Poems and image conjur a sense of place, its landscape and community shaped by sheep farming and the invading forestry, bringing to the page this unique part of the Scottish Borders.
"The James Hogg Residency brought the eyes and ears of a living poet back to all our doorsteps. Captured in this slim volume and coupled with moving images created by Helen Douglas, Rab uses the power of words and of poetry to reconnect us to the power of places we love, to see the familiar with fresh eyes, to meet our forebears and to shine a light on the way we live now. He was inspired." Duke of Buccleuch
A Venetian Brocade
Helen Douglas, Marina Warner. A Venetian Brocade, Weproductions, 2010. 180pp, 128x180mm. A visual narrative (166pp) in full colour offset by Helen Douglas with a contributing story by Marina Warner. Printed on 130gsm Hello Extra Matt, Case bound in Ratchfords Inspiration with foil blocking. Edition 1000. Price £25. ISBN 978-0-9550987-1-0.
From Tommaso Mocenigo's tomb - its great curtain drawn back - the city of Venice unfolds in the hands of Douglas' rich visual narrative, delighting in textural contrast and intricate layerings. As oneiric zone that Venice embodies, stone, brick, water, inside and out, near, far, night, day, east, west, past in present are juxtaposed and woven as one continuous brocade. Within each landscape-format spread an inner page is floated and embellished at its edge. Borders of brick dissolve as sky, images shift, merge and overlay, water laps and floods, whilst reflective glimmerings morph into mosaic and golden threads. As masterful threading within this Venetian Brocade - at its fore, Marina Warner contributes a dexterous story of unique, wondrous wide-eyed looking from East to West.
QUEENE & BELLE
Helen Douglas, QUEENE & BELLE, Weproductions, 2008. 192pp, 126mm x 90mm, four colour offset printed on 90gsm Munken Print White. Case bound in gold with grey end papers. Edition 500. Price £20. ISBN 978 0 9550987 6 5
Classical Goddesses presiding over The Haining lake lead Douglas to the world of Queene and Belle. Stepping over the threshold she ventures in, opening a door here, another there, finding glimpses of visual excitement everywhere. Tentatively at first, a visual narrative emerges, revealing in the turning of pages and threading of images the place and creative making of fashion designers Doreen Keen and Angela Bell. Pages as doorways, frame and concentrate interior looking with found rooms revealing their jewels one by one.
Loch
Helen Douglas, Loch, Weproductions, 2005, 28pp, 195 x 105mm, printed offset b&w, french folds, black cover with inset title. Edition 500. Price £8. (ISBN 0 9550987 5 0).
Inspired by the Scottish landscape Loch presents 20 roundel vignettes with fine linear renderings of water surfaces, plants, reeds and reflections.
Illiers Combray
Helen Douglas, Zoë Irvine. Illiers Combray, Aeolus & Weproductions, 2004, 114pp, 92 x 92 mm, (ISBN 0 9523284 6 1)
Two mini audio CDs, (18 mins each) placed within a 2 sided concertina book 9x9cm, 120pp, printed offset, full colour. End pockets, printed CD labels, board cover, embossed title, red fastening band, Edition 500, now into 2nd edition of 400. Price £25.
Sound artist Zoë Irvine and visual artist Helen Douglas collaborate to create a richly textured, multi layered soundscape composition (2 CDs: Irvine) and ornately interwoven visual narrative (2 sided concertina book: Douglas), exploring a sense of memory and place. Inspired in the month of May by a week long visit to Illiers Combray, the small town immortalized by Marcel Proust in his epic novel In Search of Lost Time, Irvine and Douglas weave together their own distinct mythologies and reveries; their subjective responses elliptically united by their shared sense of place.
This book won the Birgit Skiöld Memorial Trust Award LAB 04 and the Seoul International Book Arts Award 2005.
Pivot
Douglas, Helen. Evans, T. Pivot, Weproductions 2003, Text and Images, Full colour. Offset Litho. 48pp, Limp sewn, 150 x 107 mm, Edition 500 Price £6 (ISBN 0 9523284 0 2)
Pivot combines the placing of both images and a poem by Thomas Evans in a spatial relationship to the page. Both the poem and the imagery concern themselves with a pared down minimalism caught at a specific moment when mass was spared and definition became integrated in a form of quirky detail.
Unravelling the Ripple
Douglas, Helen. Unravelling the Ripple, pocketbooks, Edinburgh, 2001. 76pp, 170 x 127 mm, Edition 2000 Price £20 (ISBN 0748663037)
This book could be bound as a circle, the pages like spokes on a wheel, a turning investigation of the sea, a continuity that folds back on itself, a walk that went all the way around an island to end at its beginning... The sea that always seems I like a metaphor but one that is always moving, can not be fixed, like a heart that is like a tongue that is like a mystery that is like a story that is like a border that is like something altogether different and like everything at once the treasure that always runs through your fingers and never runs out.
A portrait of of a Hebridean island tideline by Helen Douglas, this beautiful visual book unfolds as a single photographic image flowing through the textures and rhythms of sand, wrack and wave.
With an essay by Rebecca Solnit.
Last Day in Kas
Douglas, Helen. Last Day in Kas, Nexus Press in collaboration with Weproductions, Yarrow, 2001. 76pp, 116 x 116 mm, four colour offset on l2Ogsm Strathmore Beau Brilliant with card cover, Edition 1000 Price £15 (ISBN 093252690X)
Last Day in Kas gathers the temporal and particular within the poignancy of a last day. As a form of distilled life, the book is linked through a sideways looking and walking. Places of delineated boundary and shifting ambiguity between display and protection, attraction and rebuff are negotiated through a light, touching and yielding eye. The hand as expression of primary intelligence and articulation is evoked in hand-wrought ironwork, tangible objects, tended flowers and touchable textures. With the turning of pages and dappled interplay between image, print and paper the reader's eye and hand are actively engaged in this giving and receiving to ponder the meaning of gift.
WILD WOOD
Douglas, Helen. Wild Wood, Weproductions, Yarrow, 1999. 144 pp, 11.6 x 16 cm, offset, edition 1000 Price £20 (ISBN 0 9523284 2 9).
Wild Wood has been conceived as a Border Ballad and takes as its inspiration the Carrifran Wildwood project and the ancient woods at Deuchar and Tinnis Stiel in Yarrow.
In 2000 Wild Wood won The Nexus Press Atlanta Book Prize.
Opening the book and turning the pages is analogous to entering and exploring the Wild Wood where different moods and feelings move the viewer through the visual narrative.
BECOME
Stokes, Telfer. BECOME, Weproductions, Yarrow, 2000. 108pp, 19 x 14.25 cms, Offset, Edition 1000 Price £20 (ISBN 0952328453)
The message is of hope and optimism that the beginning of every day, dawn, is a potent reminder of renewal which I see as spiritual awareness.
This potential hovers in the early section of the book and then flows into full colour as the rhythm of the song that is sung by the reader takes shape. This book has been made to be performed using the letters of the words as notes which are placed on the page to correspond to their pitch.
8 Minutes
Stokes, Telfer. 8 Minutes, 2002, 114pp, 190 x 142 mm, Edition 1000 Price £20 (ISBN 0952328445)
The title 8 Minutes refers to the time it takes light from the sun to reach Earth. Sunlight is exposure. Looking in certain qualities of light at the man made, human feelings and emotions are discovered embodied in the structures & edifices we construct and inhabit and that we continue to use and re-use.
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