Nancy Steele-Makasci, “Doomed from Birth,” left half

There are some very colorful artists’ books at Finch Lane this month, but two in particular stand out for their bold use of red, white and … black. This trio falls just shy of the colors of the American Flag, the artist’s point likely being that her subjects similarly miss the mark of her nation’s traditions and principles. In “Hog Tied,” two identical books are bound together with red and blue cords—completing the reference to the Flag—that twist both volumes unnaturally backwards on themselves, as the title suggests, turning them inside-out so that their covers, copies of the Flag, become the interior, while black pages with white writing, suggestive of schoolhouse blackboards, become the covers. The argument might be that institutional discipline, such as schools following orders dictated by politicians, now limits the once free expression we expect of books. Another Flag-inspired book binding is visible in “Bound and Determined,” wherein it is wrapped by coil after coil of white yarn that make it impossible to open. Black appears again in the word “FREE?” stamped on the edge of the text. In fact, neither book can be opened or read, but both refer unmistakably to censorship—not in some foreign autocracy, but in the contemporary United States—and to the suppression of free expression under the guise of protecting vulnerable readers. And they express their repression in black-and-white.

In the cultural decade known as “the sixties,” which ran from early in the calendar ’60s well into the ’70s, a dichotomy arose between “working to live” and “living to work,” with the assumption that everyone must choose one or the other. In fact, some people did both, as educator and artist Nancy Steele-Makasci demonstrates, and promotes, today. At Utah Valley University, she teaches the production by creative means of reproducible images that her students might use to make either a political point or a work of art while also earning a living. At the same time, the personal interests she employs as examples, such as focusing on her personal experience, or on human rights, or environmental causes, compel her to create additional original works that further make the point. As the sixties eventually learned, it’s possible to bring life and work into one vocation, and the result, in an energetic and prolific artist like Steele-Makasci, is the large body of potent, self-expressing art work she began showing a decade ago at Finch Lane, more recently at BDAC, and which is currently included in Salt Lake Community College’s Landscape and Identity exhibition and once again here, at Finch Lane, in Losing Ground.

Nancy Steele-Makasci, “Bound and Determined”

Nancy Steele-Makasci, “Hog Tied”

Artists’ books in codex style—where one edge is stitched or glued together and the pages can be fanned—do not exhibit well. They may be shown closed, so only the cover is seen. They can be shown open to one page, but that’s all the viewer can usually see. Steele-Makasci assembles her books in orihon form, which is like a scroll except that instead of rolling it up, it’s folded like the bellows of an accordion. While this allows the reader to turn the pages normally, books like “Hate and Silence are Contagious” and “Doomed From Birth” can also be shown standing up, with all the pages visible at the same time. “Doomed From Birth” opens on the title of a painting Frida Kahlo took from a newspaper headline about the murder of a woman by her husband. To that line, “A Thousand Little Nicks,” Steele-Makasci adds “Until I Don’t Exist,” thus equating many small hurtful acts, like Hamlet’s “thousand shocks that flesh is heir to,” with a mortal injury. Just because such acts of abuse may each be small in themselves doesn’t mean the relentlessness of their infliction doesn’t add up to torture. From one intricately detailed page to another, the artist makes the case that being the subject of constant scrutiny isn’t just an invasion of privacy, but also lies to the victim by telling her that her only value derives from her appearance.

Nancy Steele-Makasci, “Pando”

Not all of Steele-Makasci’s art makes such strong verbal statements. “Pando,” seen here installed as a mural, takes its name from what is said to be the world’s oldest and largest single living organism: a Quaking Aspen located in Sevier County, Utah, in the Fishlake National Forest. While long thought to be a grove of individual trees, Pando is now known to be a single organism, united in its root system. “Pando,” which draws on the botanical science that discovered this important truth in order to celebrate the natural beauty of the tree, parallels its newly discovered organization in the way the pages of a book are simultaneously individually printed, yet united by binding into a single expression. Despite its similarity to “Pando,” “If Earth Were Heaven, Would You Treat Her Better” is comprised of many (42) Mokuhango prints, each individually printed in a unique set of colors, then meticulously placed on the wall in either of two orientations. While it, too, invokes processes as small as the cellular level, it suggests geologic and atmospheric views as well.

That one of these complete works is made of books ganged together and the other of individual prints arranged to suit makes the point that an equal artistic result can be achieved either way. Each also permits a choice of useful size limited only by the artist’s stamina. Some of the most influential images of the last century were multiples like these, whether framed on the gallery wall, printed on the cover of a phonograph record, or perhaps even issued as a sticker. So Nancy Steele-Makasci raises the possibility that if an arrangement of form and color is pleasing to the eye, more like it can be even more satisfying. Mother Nature seems to have had some such idea in mind in inventing not just trees, but forests; not just rocks, but mountains; not just lakes, but oceans; and not just a few of these, but a whole planet with none to spare.

Nancy Steele-Makasci, “Doomed from Birth,” right half

Losing Ground: Nancy Steele-Makasci & Marcus Vincent, Finch Lane Gallery, Salt Lake City, through Nov. 15 with receptions  Friday, October 18, 6-9pm and Friday, November 15, 6-9pm.

All images courtesy of the author.

Geoff Wichert

Geoff Wichert objects to the term critic. He would rather be thought of as a advocate on behalf of those he writes about.