Made in the South: Artists’ Books in Vanderbilt University Special Collections

Artists and scholars recognize the role artists’ books play as artistic expression, social commentary, and bibliographic puzzles. The over 1,000 book objects in Special Collections reflect the wide spectrum of schools, artistic collaborations and styles of their creators. This project used Neo4j software to highlight those connections embedded in the books in a social network analysis.

Fellow Haley Brown encoded details about each of the nearly-500 southern artists’ books into the software in 2015. The resulting gist showed unexpected relationships between the books and their relationships between faculty and students became clear in a vast network of artists, book arts centers, and collaborations between art schools, presses, and artist-authors. The gist illustrates the books as data and shows what most artists know, how the many people in the book arts world are connected. Haley completed her MLIS in data science from the University of Syracuse in 2019.

Haley Brown with assistance of Jana Harper, Suellen Stringer-Hye and Sara Sterkenburg
[Neo4j gist of southern-made artists’ books], 2016
Vanderbilt University Special Collections

Toni Morrison. Five Poems
Silhouettes by Kara Walker
Las Vegas: Rainmaker Editions, 2002 
Designed and printed by Peter Rutledge Koch, Bound by Jace Graff, Cloverleaf Studio. 
Copy 153 of 399
Vanderbilt University Special Collections

Andy Farkas. River
Moku Hanga Artists’ Book, ed. 15
Sam Fleming Southern Civilization Collection
Vanderbilt University Special Collections    

Eusebio Leal Spengler. Havana: A Living City
Translated by Maria Vargas, illustrations by Ángel Manuel Ramírez
Tuscaloosa, AL, Havana, Cuba: Parallel Editions, 2009
Sam Fleming Southern Civilization Collection
Vanderbilt University Special Collections

[Fellow Haley Brown with Nashville book artist Lesley Patterson-Marx in Her Studio], 2015
Photograph
Vanderbilt University Libraries