Don Glaister, Foolsgold Studio, Rumi, Walt Whitman and the Voyager Spacecrafts Wonder at the Quest

Dimensions: 14” x 12” page size.

Editions: 12 variants with 10 regular and 2 deluxe 

3 in Search of the Universe is a celebration of the search for what is beyond: beyond what we see, what we think we see, and what we know we don't see. Rumi, Whitman, and the Voyager project all were instruments of this 'grand quest.' The writers wondered at the immensity and the universality of being. The scientist gave Voyager the physical form to that wonder. It fuels our wonder still.

The book begins with couplets from Rumi, letterpress printed on textured aluminum with painted accents. The effect is ethereal and timeless, as are the couplets themselves. After the Rumi pages begins a sequence of amorphous, darkly painted, textured pages with angular cut-outs that reveal hard-edged industrial forms of plastics and metals beneath. From the fold of each of these page spreads emerges a translucent page of poetry, excerpted from Walt Whitman's LEAVES OF GRASS. These seemingly incongruous elements make perfect sense given the theme of the book in general and the theme of Whitman's poetry in particular.

Bound by the artist: textured and painted paper over boards, hand-sewn with each page on tabs to allow complete opening of each page spread, black morocco spine, with sanded aluminum insets on front and back panels; title indicated by three parallel cut-outs in the aluminum inset on front panel suggesting a counting system, housed in custom-made black cloth clamshell box.