What Happening with Momma? book
What's Happening with Momma?

By Clarissa T. Sligh
Rosendale, New York: Women's Studio Workshop, 1988. Edition of 150.

6.25 x 11.5 x 2" closed; extends to 38". Multiple accordion structure: a larger horizontal structure of 6 panels and 6 vertical accordions affixed to the horizontal panels of 8 panels each. Silkscreen and letterpress. Housed in a clear plastic box.

This dimensional, house-shaped book literally unfolds to tell an autobiographical story full of pain and confusion from the author's childhood.

Clarissa Sligh, Making Artist's Books (2002): "The emergence of a memory of a younger sister being born at home set into motion the making of What's Happening With Momma? It seemed like a simple idea, but while building and combining text with photographs, I found myself groping for the physical form it would take.

"Making book dummies led me to realize that the container had to be a small safe space. But my biggest challenge was to create a structure that would also provide a way for the viewer to interact with the book in order to 'read' it. How could I evoke with photographs, mark making and text something of the way that the Baptist preacher and the gospel and rhythm and blues singers and musicians used repetitive, rhythmic fragments to elicit the audience response necessary for the satisfactory completion of their work? Here too 'the reader' needed to interact with the art.

"After agonizing over it for months, I visited Keith Smith's home in Rochester, New York. There I saw a videotaping of a book artist, Susan Share, perform her book in order for it to be seen by the viewer. I knew immediately that her process of 'unfolding' was exactly what my piece was about. That night, a multiple accordion structure came to me in a dream. Waking up, I drew it in my sketchbook on the table beside my bed. The next morning I saw that it was the solution to the problem for which I had been searching.

"Initially the book was made using a Van Dyke Brown alternative photographic process. Negatives were pieced together and contact printed for the house-shaped accordion structure. The interior accordion pieces, printed separately on a different paper, were cut, folded and adhered to the interior of the house structure with adhesive. Using these methods, I was able to make a very small and ephemeral edition. The following year, Women's Studio Workshop in Rosendale, New York, awarded me an artist residency fellowship. While there I made a different version of What's Happening With Momma? Ann Kalmbach guided me in strengthening the structure and in printing an edition of 150 books with silk screen inks and letterpress."
(SOLD)