Zane Grey and Me , 2015
Artwork Shop
8.25 x 10.75
in
The underlying question is, how does reading romanticized versions of the American West affect an impressionable horse lover? The colors and sculpted shapes of the pages, along with the horizontal layout, evoke the landscape of the Southwest. The cowhide cover, with its silver concho closure, brings to mind journals kept by pioneers. The two columns of text on each page, one from Zane Grey's 1917 novel Wilfire and one from the author's life, reveal the tension between fiction and reality, past and present.
Printed damp in purple ink on eight colors of St. Armand paper, and bound in leather with exposed longstitch. The tops of the pages are cut into canyon and mesa outlines. Mr. Grey’s text is set in Farmers Old Style, via monotype composition from M & H Type; Ms. Rappoport’s text is handset Centaur. 32 pages. Illustrated profusely with vintage dingbats, as well as a frontispiece drawing by Andrew Larkin. Anatomical heart drawn by Bobbe Besold.