©1996 Scott Teplin and Christopher Wilde of Artichoke Yink Press
Box by Nugent J. Vitallo of Blue Barrel Press
11.5 x 16.5 cm - 14 seriagraphed, hand cut pages
Edition of 20
Pages: 100% cotton rag 140 lb. Lana
Cover: 100 cotton rag 140 lb. Stonehenge
All original drawings by Scott Teplin
Statement:
This book carries references to the inside of the human body, both directly beneath the skin and after restorative surgery has been performed, resulting in an outer layer of sutures. The open spine, with exposed stitching serves to emphasize this idea. The pages have been individually cut to bring back the feeling of hand attention which seems to have been lost in today's printed books, and is a precision skill shared with both artists and surgeons. It gives the viewer an emphasized sense of closeness to the object they are holding. This is part of the reason I have for making books. There is no other form of art in which the viewer may feel such a close sense of understanding. Human touch is extremely important to reaching various levels of comprehension, and a book allows a person to not only look at it at their own personal pace, but to actually feel the object which helps to heighten the overall experience.
I have been interested in surgery ever since I was a child. I am to
this day fascinated with the parallels between artists and surgeons, and
their use of incredibly refined hand-eye coordination and concentration.
I started drawing these forms after studying several surgical manuals with
subjects ranging from replantations, alterations and how-to directions for
tying surgical knots. I tried to combine all of these subjects in a specific
series of drawings. The successful images were seriagraohed into the book.
The colored inks were printed, and then sliced through to reveal what pro-
and precedes them. This imagery helps to unfold the increasingly complicated
and vulnerable layers of flesh that a surgeon encounters as she/he delves
deeper beneath the skin. The viewer of this book becomes the surgeon as
she/he turns the pages, exposing what lies beneath each delicate page.