Link to Frances Jetter's Amalgam

 Page Under Reconstruction

Published by Fantagraphics Books — available October 8th, 2024

For 12 years, I worked on an artists book about my grandfather (who came to America in 1911) and the times in which he lived. I am interested in telling stories about people and how their lives intersect with history. "Amalgam" is a pictorial history of my immigrant grandparents and their American family of factory workers, their old world ways and desire to assimilate, my grandfather's part in his labor union and the ongoing fight for a living wage. Most of the 24" x 18" images are cut from linoleum and several are lithographs.

Making the Prints for AMALGAM

Justin Sanz printing

Ian Harkey working on the chine colle pieces

On March 5th 2007, a car bomb was exploded on al-Mutanabbi Street in Baghdad, “street of the booksellers”, killing more than 30 people and wounding over 100. Al-Mutanabbi Street held bookstores, outdoor bookstalls and cafes and was the heart and soul of the Baghdad literary and intellectual community.
In July 2010, Beau Beausoleil put out a call for book artists to join ‘An Inventory Of Al-Mutanabbi Street’, a project to “re-assemble” some of the “inventory” of the reading material that was lost in the car bombing, creating books that reflect both the strength and fragility of books, and showing the endurance of the ideas within them.

In “Street of Booksellers”, (wood cover, linocut, 6.5" x 6", 2012) the voices of long-dead poets continue to speak to us, from the "heads, tails, spines and bodies" of books- burned, broken, bulldozed and buried, on Al-Mutanabbi Street, and other streets beloved of writers and readers.

S L I D E S H O W