Imagining Lynd Ward is available from the publisher at freedomvoices.org or can be ordered from your favorite bookstore. It is also available from Art Hazelwood.
In this book the life of graphic novel artist Lynd Ward (1905-1985) as told by author and scholar David A. Beronä consists of a series of vignettes, each accompanied by relief prints illustrating the story.
The vignettes include descriptions of the childhood of Lynd Ward, his marriage, his graphic woodcut novels, and his later illustrated children’s books. Renowned graphic novel artist Eric Drooker provides an introduction to both Lynd Ward as well as the author.
David A. Beronä’s insights into the life of Lynd Ward are based on a lifetime of research into the history of the graphic novel. He investigated the roots of contemporary graphic novels through the wordless novels of Lynd Ward, Frans Masereel and others. Beronä wrote the prefaces to many new editions of these woodcut novels. He also had an ongoing friendship with the daughters of Lynd Ward, and visited the family retreat on a lake in Canada that served as a refuge for Ward.
Imagining Lynd Ward includes the work of seven contemporary artists who created relief prints (woodcut and linoleum cut) to illustrate each of the sections of the book. The artists are from a wide background, across the US and in France, and represent a variety of approaches to the relief print in storytelling. The illustrators include Olivier Deprez, Jules Remedios Faye, Drew Grasso, Art Hazelwood, Frances Jetter, Billy Simms, Kurt Brian Webb.
Author David A. Beronä was a historian of woodcut novels and wordless comics who published and presented papers widely on wordless books. He is the author of Wordless Books: The Original Graphic Novels, Abrams, New York, 2008. Beronä served on the editorial board of the International Journal of Comic Art. He was the director of Lamson Library at Plymouth State University, New Hampshire, and visiting faculty member at the Center for Cartoon Studies, White River Junction, Vermont.
David A. Beronä was a friend to all of us who worked on this book. He inspired us with his research and supported us with his belief in our own work. The contributors below participated in this project out of respect and love for David. We worked to try to complete this project for David before he passed away, but we missed the mark by a month. Still he saw the project in progress and was pleased to see it happening.
image by Frances JetterDownload the pdf files for this book
Book Description and images|
Book Contributors
An exhibition including several artists in this book was held in his honor February - May, 2016. Wordless: The Collection of David A. Beronä, Billy Ireland Cartoon Library & Museum, Ohio State University LIbraries, Columbus OH, Exhibition Link
Imagining Lynd Ward
David A Beronä
Introduction by Eric Drooker
64 pages, color cover, interior black and white,
23 illustrations by these artists Olivier Deprez, Jules Remedios Faye, Drew Grasso, Art Hazelwood, Frances Jetter, Billy Simms, Kurt Brian Webb
perfect bound, 8.5 x 8.5 inches, designed by Art Hazelwood
ISBN 978-0-915117-25-3, $11.95
Published by Freedom Voices, San Francisco
See the rest of Hazelwood's prints for the book here
Eric Drooker is a painter and graphic novelist. His paintings have appeared on dozens of covers of The New Yorker, while his graphics and street posters are a familiar site in the global street art movement. He won the American Book Award for Flood! A Novel in Pictures, soon followed by Blood Song, and Howl: A Graphic Novel. He was animation designer for the film, Howl.
drooker.com
Born in, Belgium, and Living in Rogues, in the south of France since 2005. Olivier Deprez is a founder of “Frémok” (www.fremok.org), an artist association. Books published by Frémok include a rewriting with woodcuts of the Kafka’s novel The Castle, and a woodcut novel made with people with developmental disabilities Après la Mort, Après la Vie. Olivier Deprez had an important exhibition at Le Centre de la Gravure et de l’image Imprimée in La Louvière, Belgium in 2014.
Jules Remedios Faye is an author, editor, letterpress printmaker, bookbinder, teacher, book artist & the proprietress of Stern & Faye Printers in Mt Vernon, Washington. She began printing in 1976 and started publishing fine press books and prints in 1992 with her late husband, C. Christopher Stern. Faye teaches, curates and participates in book arts exhibits and events throughout the Pacific Northwest. sternandfaye.com
Drew Grasso graduated with a BFA in printmaking from the San Francisco Art Institute in 2015. He has completed two graphic novels and will be having his first solo show in 2016 at Campfire Gallery.
image by Art Hazelwood
Art Hazelwood has worked for over 20 years with homeless rights groups; creating prints and street posters, and has written two books on art and homelessness. He has taught printmaking at San Quentin State Prison and the San Francisco Art Institute. His prints and artist books are in several major collections including the Whitney Museum of American Art, the New York Public Library, and the Library of Congress. His first major museum show (with Ronnie Goodman) is at the Georgia Museum of Art in 2015.
For more than 25 years, Frances Jetter’s images illustrated articles in the New York Times, The Washington Post, The Nation, and other publications. Jetter’s prints are in the permanent collections of the Fogg Art Museum at Harvard, and Detroit Institute of Arts. Her artist’s books are included in the Library of Congress’ Special Collections, The New York Public Library’s Spencer Collection, and in numerous public and private collections. fjetter.net
Billy Simms is currently an MFA student in printmaking at Miami University. Billy has been working in art and printmaking for 15 years. His novel in woodcuts, The Clown Genocide, won the 2012 Award for Excellence at the Dayton Area Works on Paper Show and the 2013 Drake University Emerging Writer’s Award in Graphic Fiction. Billy has also won awards for his photography, sculpture, and mixed media work.
billysimmsart.wordpress.com
Kurt Brian Webb, a printmaker and research enthusiast in the graphic arts, privately published a wordless biography in linoleum cuts based on the life of artist, author, and scientist Dr. John Kolyer. John Kolyer: Biography in linoleum cuts is in the permanent collection of over 100 university libraries and art schools in both the United States and abroad. Webb’s current project is to prepare a comprehensive historical survey of early twentieth-century unknown wordless full-length novels with stories told exclusively in relief prints.