The Amichai Windows

Arlington, VA: Turtle Light Press, 2017. Limited Edition. Hardcover. Fine in Fine Archival Box. Limited Edition. Hardcover. A compilation of 18 unbound triptychs and a catalogue inside a double drop-spine enclosure. The work explores love, war, and being Jewish in the 20th century. Amichai's work, often considered for the Nobel Prize in Literature, explores family, love and war. Black, having fallen in love with Amichai's poetry, spent ten years creating this remarkable work. Blending of some of Amichai's original, handwritten poems with collaged images of Jewish history and life drawn from archives around the world.
Aharon Yermiyahu Taub, in his review for the American Jewish Libraries newsletter, stated; "a towering achievement in American arts and letters, the culmination of a decade of reflection, research, translation, and artistic imagination and a breathtaking exploration of literary and visual poetics." [AJL. News, Feb/March 2018, Vol. VIII, No. 1]. Recent winner of the Isaac Anolic Jewish Book Arts Award.
"Almost every aspect of The Amichai Windows is symbolic. From the simulacrum enclosure of a Jerusalem window to the texture of papers that evoke Jerusalem stone, from the olive green color meant to evoke the Jerusalem landscape to blind embossment of a Jewish star-I am always evoking meaning in a multiplicity of ways.
Over the past ten years making The Amichai Windows, I wanted people to experience this artist book not only by reading the poems but by lifting a curtain, handling the papers, touching the blind embossment. Aside from playing with the visibility of images in a window, I am also toying with the materiality of the book itself.
I spun my own metaphors out of Amichai's poems. I also mirrored Amichai's own process of combining images from different places and time periods in my collages. These multi-layered spreads-which include letterpressed poems, blind-embossed images, gold leaf, tipped-on papers and botanicals-function like dreamscapes, thus creating additional layers of meaning.
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In addition, you'll see a torn bit of super, the fine mesh that helps from the spine of a book. I am using the bookmaker's material as a metaphor for the burning of books that occurred in Nazi Germany. I am also toying here with the word itself, "super," and the idea of racial superiority.
I hope The Amichai Windows will resonate deeply for you." [Artist statement]. Tight, bright, and unmarred.
Numbered limited edition, this being 6 of 18 copies. Printed on handmade paper with deckled edges, with gold leaf highlights and blind embossments in some of the designs. The collection of triptychs and a 28 page guide are housed in a box enclosure shaped like a Jerusalem window.