63. The Ballad of Lemon and Crow by Glenn Todd
The Ballad of Lemon and Crow by Glenn Todd, with six photogravures and ink-blot drawings by Bruce Conner and Anonymous Artists, 2002.
The Ballad of Lemon and Crow is a work of fiction by a San Francisco writer who grew up in Texas and whose regional sensibility is keenly felt in this tale about three generations of neighbors in rural Oklahoma. This limited edition is its first publication. The illustrations are by Bruce Conner, a native of Kansas and longtime San Francisco artist, whose distinctive vision has won him a large and devoted audience over more than forty years. The artist and author first met in Omaha in 1953, as members of a Midwestern literary and artistic circle that became associated with the Beat Generation.
THE STORY
The Ballad of Lemon and Crow is a tale of three generations of two
neighboring families whose lives intertwine during the early and middle
years of the twentieth century. Set in Oklahoma, it begins when the state
is still the Indian Territory. One family is white, the other black. Old
Lady Lemon and Granny Pearl Crow live on the outskirts of a small town along
a red road that leads into the sunset. The matriarchs have many children,
but by the end of their lives, only two, Mam Lemon and Randall Crow, remain
at home to care for their widowed mothers. After the mothers die, Mam, an
old maid with no prospects of a husband, is left alone and childless, but
Randall journeys to Louisiana and brings back a fourteen-year-old bride,
Madame Ida Pilar. Ida Pilar and Mam cautiously enter a relationship that
becomes central to their reclusive lives. Nine sons are born to Ida Pilar.
Mam stays unmarried but her overpowering and unwavering desire is to have
at least one child. In her steadfast Biblical faith, even as her childbearing
years pass, she is convinced that God will fulfill her longing, and she
is determined to do her part. The Old Lady Lemon taught her to how to make
lilac wine, an aphrodisiac concoction that renders Mam irresistible to the
suitors that she seeks among the itinerant ministers who preach in the crude
brush-arbor churches of the Great Depression. Finally as Mam enters old
age, she gives birth to a daughter, Beulah; at the same time Ida has her
last son, Ned. The children are friends from birth and play together along
the banks of a creek in rural Eden until the consequences of the usage of
magic begin to blight their lives. With its stark emotions and spare recital
of events, The Ballad of Lemon and Crow has many ingredients of the
folk tale and the fable. The supernatural and the fantastic occur throughout.
In the end the spells and enchantments inexorably unfold to bring about
a chaos of murder and revenge, after which only the peace of desolation
is left. Both houses fall and ghosts wander about the hills and on the red
road that leads into the sunset.
THE AUTHOR
Glenn Todd was born in Archer City, Texas, in 1930. After high school he served in the United States Army in Texas. He studied English Literature at Wichita State University and did graduate work the University of California at Berkeley. Beginning in 1964 he worked as a printer for the San Francisco fine printers and publishers Andrew Hoyem, Grabhorn-Hoyem, and then Arion Press, where he became an editor and wrote introductions to some of its publications. He was the author of a monograph on the history of poems written in graphic arrangements for Shaped Poetry and introductory essays to The Temple of Flora, The Captivity Narrative of Hannah Duston, and Eureka by Edgar Allan Poe. After his retirement in 1995, he began writing fiction. Todd is working on a novel entitled "Smooch".
THE ARTISTS
Bruce Conner was born in McPherson, Kansas, in 1933. He received the Bachelor
of Fine Arts degree from the University of Nebraska in 1955. He had solo
exhibitions in galleries beginning in 1956. In 1960 he began to show at
the Batman Gallery in San Francisco and in 1961 at the Alan Gallery in New
York. An exhibition beginning at the M. H. de Young Museum in San Francisco
in 1974 traveled to the Joslyn Museum in Omaha, Wadsworth Atheneum in Hartford,
Otis Art Gallery in Los Angeles, and Chicago Museum of Contemporary Art.
His latest museum exhibition, A large survey of Conner's art in the mediums
of drawing, painting, printmaking, photogram, assemblage, collage, and film,
was exhibited by the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, Walker Art Center
in Minneapolis, and the Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art. Bruce Conner's
work is owned by major museums, such as the Museum of Modern Art, New York;
Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; San Francisco Museum of Modern
Art; Los Angeles County Art Museum; Art Institute of Chicago; Hirshhorn
Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, D.C.; Smithsonian American Art
Museum; and Walker Art Center, Minneapolis. After 2000 Conner announced
he was retiring and would not sign or claim any new work as his own. Since
then anonymous artist have collaborated to create additional work in a manner
similar to that of Bruce Conner. We have no biographical information about
the anonymous artists.
THE BOOK
The book is octavo in format, 10.25 by 7 inches. The type is English Old Style, composed and cast in Monotype by Mackenzie & Harris, San Francisco. The text paper is Ruysdael, an all-cotton machine-made sheet. The paper for the prints is T. H. Saunders buff loan, an all-cotton mouldmade sheet. The ink-blot drawings in gray beneath the folios and the rebus on the title page were printed from photopolymer plates. Printing of the type and plates was by letterpress. The book is bound in yellow cloth with an ink-blot pattern in black, from a drawing by an anonymous artist that is continuous front to back, interrupted by a black cloth spine. The book is enclosed in a black slipcase. Both book and slipcase have yellow spine labels.
THE PRINTS
The six images are photogravures from collages of wood engravings. The original collages are ovals, 6.5 by 4.5 inches. The scale of the images for the book is the same as the original collages, while the scale for the extra suite of prints is at 150%, 10 by 7 inches. The paper for the suite is British handmade Millbourne Parchment Substitute, 17.25 by 12.75 inches. In response to Conner's oval collages, and after the book was already printed, Todd wrote a series of six brief prose-poems linking the imagery back to the story. These pieces are printed on the interleaving sheets between the six intaglio prints for the extra suite in portfolio that can be purchased with the book.
EDITIONS & PRICES
This is the sixty-third publication of the Arion Press. The book edition is limited to 300 copies for sale, of which 30 copies accompany the extra suite of prints. Each copy is numbered and is signed by the author and artist. The print edition is limited to 30 copies for sale. Each of the six prints in the suite is numbered and signed by the artist.
Edition of the book only (270 copies) $500. Out of print.
Edition of the book with the extra suite of six larger prints (30 sets)
$6,000. Available
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Artist, Author, Title, or KeywordEdition available: Book with suite of six larger photogravures by Conner on handmade paper with prose-poems by Todd. The book is octavo in format, 10-1/4 by 7 inches. The six images in the extra suite are 17-1/4 by 12-3/4 inches. The edition of the suite of prints with the book is limited to 30 numbered sets for sale. Price: $6,000.
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