Transient Books ~ Argentina
(Alex Apella)

27 - 72
Poems by Alex Appella
Illustrations by Eve Slinker
Icho Cruz, Argentina / Enterprise, Oregon: Transient Books, 2006. Edition of 3.

9.25 x 9.25 x 4.5"; 14 pages. Accordion. Acid-free materials. Giclée prints printed on an Epson Ink Jet Printer. Text and images tipped onto pages of red, blue, green, brown, or rose bookboard pages bound with 1.6" black ribbon. Housed in a black paper-covered clamshell box. Designed and bound by Alex Appella.

Two women: aunt / niece; Oregon / Argentina; artist / writer-bookmaker.

Alex Appella: "From April 2001 to April 2002, Alex Appella and Eve Slinker maintained an artistic exchange through the mail. Alex was living in the sierras of Córdoba, Argentina. Eve Slinker was living in Wallowa County, Oregon, USA. Alex sent a poem, Eve responded with a painting, and so on over the course of a year. They did not discuss the exchange outside of the artistic responses they sent back and forth.

"The book’s title reflects the ages of the artists: Alex Appella was 27 at the time, and her aunt, Eve Slinker, was 72. The exchange itself mirrors a relationship of mutual inspiration. It is a conversation between the hope of over 7 decades, and the despair of nearly 3.

"In October of 2002 the original paintings and bound poems were shown at the Pendleton Center for the Arts in Pendleton, Oregon."

About the Artists:

Alex Appella, originally from Oregon, began binding her books on a boat in Alaska, with the idea that original literature should be accessible, both for the writer and for the reader. After traveling half-way around the world with a mini-bookbinding workshop on her back (including a typewriter), and selling her artist’s books on the streets and plazas of Latin America, Alex now creates them in her studio in Argentina, and offers them through internet. Alex’s varied collection of artist’s books can be found in public and private collections throughout the US, and beyond.

Eve Slinker: “The arts have been a part of my life from the time I was a child until now, when I am a senior citizen. It wasn’t until I missed yet another complicated run in a two-piano piece that I decided, definitively, that I would switch to the visual arts instead of music. Music travels through time and space and leaves nothing but a feeling behind. It can be glorious. With visual arts there is something tangible, good or bad, that leaves a feeling as well an object that can be touched and felt. I needed that concrete evidence.

“When I went back to school, after raising my children and being a housewife, mother, companion, and “looker after,” my thoughts were to be more sophisticated than I had been with the arts, and to expand my watercolor background to include oils, drawing materials, and water miscible media to further my endeavors.

“My inner life has been foremost in my imaginings. Religion and politics are other persons’ subject matter. It’s my family and myself that has been the subject of my paintings, whether the actual picture is of birds, trees, interiors, or the Snake River. Whether there has been guilt, sorrow or happiness expressed, color has a great deal to do with my feelings.

“I used to wonder about painting things that represented other ideas. As I get older I wonder less. I look back at things I’ve painted and recognize that they represented a period of my life. Not being a wordsmith, I put things into paintings, choosing the media according to what would express the feeling of the painting best – not that there were conscious decisions. Things just happened. Now, I believe that there are no accidents, the right people show up at the right time and we all have a higher power that/who has an influence on our lives.

“It is up to us to trust and it is our honor to be creative.”
$800 (Last Copy)

The János Book
By Alex Appella
2006. Edition of 50.

21.7 x 63.8 cm (approx. 8.5 x 25”); 35 pages printed on one side. Includes 29 full color collages. Boards in black cloth with Japanese stab binding. Cut out on front board to reveal the face of one brother. Housed in a blackcloth clamshell box. Printed on 120 gram Bakri Avorio Paper using an Epson Inkjet printer and Epson Durabright Inks. Research, writing, design, printing, and binding by Alex Appella.

It’s difficult not to be hyperbolic about the scope and accomplishment of this work. Twelve years of research and development do not even begin to speak of its cost, or of its value. Because it involves self-knowledge, this book feels as painful and liberating as birth.

Questions abound: Is the past ever past? How long are its tentacles? Despite what we think in America, is it possible to reinvent oneself?

Full of drama both high and low, the story spans the 20th century. A 20-year-old Appella gets her Great Uncle János to open up about things that have not been talked about for decades. It begins – but we don’t know this at the beginning – with a Jewish family and five siblings in pre-WWI Hungary. By the time Alex Appella, the granddaughter of one of those siblings, becomes a part of the saga 70 or so years later, the family has been challenged by circumstance, diminished by events beyond their control, and scattered by personal decision. Heritage denied; heritage embraced. Does it make a difference?

My grandfather’s brother – your brother – emigrated to Palestine? We are Jewish? What do you mean? What does that mean? What can it mean?

Pontificate about the value of truth all you want to, The János Book reveals its cost.

Appella’s collage technique is well suited to capture this layered tale. The pages froth with art as well as information.

"One has to cry for the disintegration of our family. One has to cry, because what happened to us, has happened to millions of families all over the world. Since my childhood, it's like a bomb exploded among us, and we were scattered apart. An eye in Cuba, a bone in Argentina, a hand in California, a foot in Connecticut, and still more in Israel and Canada and Switzerland, all over the world. Conversations like what you and I have, Alex, at one time were common among family members. I'm passing on what I know of our family, to add meat and flesh to the pieces that have been scattered all over the world. The unity of what we once were can still give us strength, and can remind us of what we need for strength in the present and in the future.

"At some point, one must ask: what really leaves traces behind us? Nothing. What is painful today, or what was painful yesterday, or what is going to be painful tomorrow, in the end turns out to be nothing more than anecdotes. And then nothing. It is forgotten. Life is like water, it cleanses everything. Even the most painful. But the written word is not lost, ever. Memory, memory fades. The pain and the traces always disappear with time. The written word does not."
~ János Szenti

$2,000

Flash Flood
By Alex Appella
2005. Edition of 10.

8.75 x 6.5", 58 pages. Binding and design by Alex Appella. Illustration on title page created by Eve Slinker for this edition. From the Colophon: Flat Back Binding. The signatures are sewn onto linen tapes. The deckled pages are of Rives Tradition 120 gm paper. The content is printed on an Epson Inkjet printer using Garamond font. The slip cover is made of 250 gm Bakri coverstock. All materials are acid-free.

Flash Flood is a collection of poems written in 2003-4 that reflect the river valley where the author lives in the province of Córdoba, Argentina. The poems are divided into four themes: Place & Time, People, Thought, Beyond. The design of this edition is meant to accompany the endangered habit of spending a quiet afternoon with a book of poetry.
$95 (Four copies remaining.)

Jose, a poem from Flash Flood.

Jose
the stone mason
learned from his father
and grandfather
all the world is a stage
he can build
stone by stone
which he does
as they did
and
or
he can build
story by story
which makes for quite a foundation
such thick walls
even a solid roof
that not the wind, nor jealousy,
not the sun, nor gossip
can erode.

The Garden
By Alex Apella
2001.

15 pages. Written and bound by Alex Appella.

Alex Apella: "A series of poems from life within the chaos of Argentina. As my vegetable garden grows, I watch inside and I watch outside and these are the words found in my sierra town, in the day, in this country tumbling through a nervous breakdown. "
$10

The Hammock Book:
Tales of Suspension on a Planet in Extreme Crisis
By Alex Apella
2002.

17 pages. Written and bound by Alex Appella.

Poetry by Alex Apella.
$10

The Gypsies

The gypsies
roam in flags
of no nations
flowering breasts
nectars just covered
in yards of color
from this continent
and that one.
The gypsies' curls weave
their pupils twist
their fingers paw and tug
ringless on a day's work
in the city
fishing fortunes
among the crowds
who step into traffic
to avoid their possibilities
who scurry away
with biting temptation
from the ideas of the gypsies
and what they may
or may not tell you.
Do not stare at a gypsy
unless your pockets and your hopes
are empty.
Do not wish on a fortune
unless you have witnessed a gypsy
frolicking,
cackling
with yours.

Temptations of the Frijolera Pot
By Alex Apella
2001. Edition of 240

48 full-color illustrations of over 20 poems. Each of the 240 numbered copies (120 in English, 120 en Español) is hand-bound by the author. Illustrated by Silvana de Gonzalez. Single volume double-back binding version with English and Spanish versions at opposite ends.

This collection of poems reflect an overland journey the author made with her husband from Alaska to Costa Rica. (October 1999-May 2000) The pages of this book blossom people, livelihoods and mysteries that accompany any traveler with an open heart.

The illustrations are realized using collage, pencil, ink, and watercolor. The author gave this collection of poems (unillustrated) to Silvana de Gonzalez as a gift upon her return from an extended journey throughout South America. As a surprise, Silvana then returned the book, fully illustrated, to the author. The illustrations were then scanned and prepared for off set printing.

The 240 numbered copies are bound in a number of different formats: single language and bilingual, with or without slip cases, using a wide variety of materials. No two copies are alike.

Single volume without slipcase $67
Single volume in slipcase $98
Two-volume set (one English, one Spanish). Slipcased. $120

Well Diggers
By Alex Apella
2003.

10 cm x 10 cm. A bi-lingual presentation of a poem written in Teotitlán del Valle, Oaxaca, Mexico in 2000. Una presentación bilingüe de un poema escrito en Teotitlán del Valle, Oaxaca, Mexico en 2000.
$5

The well diggers,

one below and one above,
pull up a bucket at a time
of rock
they began digging 8 months ago.
The circle they are pressing into the earth
is a meter and a half across
and barely 14 meters deep
and only just now damp

What Are You Doing Here?
By Alex Apella
2003.

5.5 x 4.25". Of the decision made by one US citizen to continue living in a crisis-stricken, unstable Argentina.
$8

'What are you doing here?'

Argentina asks me everyday.
'We're all trying to leave and you come to live here?'
They ask, and ask again.
'But why would you ever want to live here?'
Sometimes I respond, sometimes I invent, sometimes I ask back.
'What are you doing here, in the middle of all this mess?'
Sometimes I really have no answer at all.

Amerika Skitzofrenika
By Alex Apella
Cover design by Magu Appella
2001.

8.25 x 5.25"; 14 photocopied pages, handsewn into 8.5 x 6" brown cardstock.

A collection of vignettes and poems, memories of a young American woman now living in South America which she found herself repeating to individuals in Latin America who asked her about growing up in the USA.
$10

On highways going through the forest, there are yellow diamond-shaped signs that have icons of jumping deer on them. (Beware of deer crossing the road.

Or rocks tumbling off a cliff. (Beware of falling rocks.)

There are yellow signs warning of curvy roads, of ice, of ducks.

The Tempest, the Shadow & the Lunatic
By Alex Apella
Icho Cruz, Argentina: Transient Books, 2008. Hardcover, unlimited but numbered.

5 x 6 x 1.25"; 68 pages.This illustrated edition was published in 2008. This expands (with photographs) an unillustrated softcover version first published in 2001. Epson inkjet printer with archival inks. Binding of both versions is accordion style with the 3 short stories in the valley-folds. Softcover has blue paper covers with sewn binding. Hardcover is quarter cloth with photo images on front and back boards, and comes in a box with fitted lid. Box has decorative papers over bookboard with reproduced photograph inset. Written, designed, and bound by Alex Appella.

All photos that enhance the stories were taken at the time the events occurred.

Three short stories by Alex Appella documenting journeys while traveling through Mexico and Nicaragua.

Alex Appella: "'the tempest' is an encounter with Javier and Silvia who lead us to a high sierra town of few words and many mushrooms. 'the shadow' is of a hitchhike ride with Patricia in her mini-van that left us in an ancient Zapotec village. 'the lunatic' is a window into selling books in the plazas of a broken Nicaragua."
$180 illustrated numbered edition, hardcover and boxed
$25 unillustrated trade edition, softcover

El Trueque
By Alex Appella
Icho Cruz, Argentina: Transient Books, 2008.

6.75 x 8.5"; 24 pages. All acid-free materials. Printed on 106 gram paper, using Futura Lt BT bond. Quarter bound in green bookcloth with illustrated paper-covered boards. Bound using a reinforced perfect binding. Written,designed, and bound by Alex Appella.

Alex Appella: "A collection of non-fiction short stories written in the sierras of Córdoba, Argentina, in 2000 and 2001. El trueque is the practice of bartering in Argentina.

At the time this book was written, the peso was harder and harder to come by, and bartering clubs became an ever increasing way for Argentineans to put food on the table and take care of basic clothing and miscellaneous needs. These true stories are based on Alex & Magu's [the printer/artist and her husband] experiences as regular participants in these bartering clubs."
$38 (Hardcover)
$10 (Softcover) (Last two copies)