The needle sings to the book
Subtitle: poem
By: by Lois Marie Harrod
Contributors: Laplante, Mario, book artist; Gravel Press; Al-Mutanabbi Street Coalition; Al-Mutanabbi Street Starts Here Artists' Books Collection (Columbia University. Rare Book and Manuscript Library)
Publisher: The Gravel Press
Published: 2011
Place of publication: San Francisco, California
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; 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.
Notes: Issued in a three panel cloth-covered wraparound with magnet closure; image of a needle stamped on front cover.

In an edition of 15.

Text unfolds to a double sided accordion structure with six panels, cloth covered with paper-hinged panels. Americana letterpress for the poem and digital printing with an Epson stylus 9800 for the images of antique needlework.

"On March 5, 2007 a car bomb exploded on Al-Mutanabbi Street in Baghdad, killin thirty people and injuring more than one hundred. This mixed Shia-Sunni neighborhood has for centuries been the center of a thriving intellectual and literary community in Iraq. [Text] is my [book artist Mario Laplante] is my contribution to a project undertaken by book artists worldwide to literally and symbolically create, a new collection of books. ... Lois Marie Harrod [has written] a poem that cherishes the first steps in my creation of this book, discovering and assembling squares of antique needlework."--Colophon.

Gift; Beau Beausoleil; 2019-2020.