River of reading
By: Sue Sommers
Contributors: Al-Mutanabbi Street Coalition; Al-Mutanabbi Street Starts Here Artists' Books Collection (Columbia University. Rare Book and Manuscript Library)
Publisher: [publisher not identified]
Published: 2012
Place of publication: Pinedale, WY]
Language: eng
Subjects: Violence; Pictorial works; Booksellers and bookselling; Bombings; Iraq War, 2003-2011; Protest movements; Books and reading in art; Intellectual life; Social conditions; Censorship; Terrorism in art; In art; War and civilization; Vehicle bombs; Visual literature; Specimens; Cultural property; Destruction and pillage; Rivers in art; Artists' books; Al-Mutanabbi Street Coalition
Description: This collection supports and promotes awareness to the important mission and framework of the Al-Mutanabbi Street Starts Here Coalition's focus on the lasting power of the written word and the arts in support of the free expression of ideas, the preservation of shared cultural spaces, and the importance of responding to attacks, both overt and subtle, on artists, writers, and academics working under oppressive regimes or in zones of conflict, despite the destruction of that literary/cultural content.

"In River of reading, my three-volume book for this project, I share with the people of al-Mutanabbi Street the idea that the flow of the written word makes a river - like the Green River near my home, and the Tigris through Baghdad. This river sustains us all; our poetry and prose keeps us human. That is why we should 'never let the river run dry.' I drew from a topographical map of the Green River, and added titles of my favourite volumes as randomly scattered landmarks. There wasn't room for all the books I love, of course"--The Book Arts at the Centre for Fine Print Research, UK website.

Sue Sommers is an artist and publication designer in Pinedale, Wyoming. She lives beside the Green River, one of the major watercourses of the American West, and loves to read. Sue has exhibited nationally since the 1980s, with bodies of work in painting, book art and small sculpture. Her work hangs permanently in the Wyoming State Capitol in Cheyenne; she is a Wyoming Arts Council Fellowship winner, and she is a founder of the Pipeline Art Project: "Pumping Art from the Energy State of Wyoming."
Notes: Cover title.

Medium/materials: Folding screen: paper with covers made from synthetic stucco sample boards.

On March 5th, 2007, a car bomb exploded on al-Mutanabbi Street in Baghdad. Al-Mutanabbi Street is located in a mixed Shia-Sunni area. More than 30 people were killed and more than 100 wounded. Al-Mutanabbi Street, the historic center of Baghdad bookselling, holds bookstores and outdoor bookstalls, cafes, stationery shops, and even tea and tobacco shops. It has been the longstanding heart and soul of the Baghdad literary and intellectual community for centuries. In response to the attack, a San Francisco poet and bookseller, Beau Beausoleil, rallied a community of international artists and writers to produce a collection of letterpress-printed broadsides (poster-like works on paper), artists' books (unique works of art in book form), and an anthology of writing, all focused on expressing solidarity with Iraqi booksellers, writers and readers. The coalition of contributing artists calls itself Al-Mutanabbi Street Starts Here Coalition.

Gift; Beau Beausoleil; 2019-2020.