Tiptoe through the cosmos

Creator

Vigners, Susan T.

Date

• 2008

Publisher

Philadelphia, Pennsylvania: Shandy Press

Summary

• COLOPHON: "Tiptoe Through the Cosmos was created and printed by Susan Vigners. The font is Optima, except for the Sabon italics. The text is letterpress, printed on a Vandercook Proofing Press, using polymer plates, and the images are plate lithographs, printed on a Charles Brand Press, or screenprints. The paper is Stonehenge. With thanks to Lori Spencer and Mary Phelan and a nod of appreciation to Tiny Tim. Shandy Press. Philadelphia, PA 2008."
• Susan Viguers: "This is a book of nonsense that shades gradually (and partially) into meaning. The imagery seeks to conflate or merge the earth with the heavens. The text's consciousness of the structure of the book itself - the gutter, the edge of a page - adds to the literalism that is always a part of nonsense. In the end, the book is a comic hymn to the objects and creatures of everyday (and nature): the earthworm, the embodiment of the worthy meek, ventures into the cosmos (the flower, but more prominently, the heavens). Behind this book is a scholarly essay I published 25 years ago ("Nonsense and the Language or Poetry"), in which I argued that there is a connection between nonsense (I was thinking of Edward Lear and Lewis Caroll) and metaphor in that in figurative language meaning is only possible with the acknowledgment of the element of nonsense. (If it makes perfect 'sense,' then it becomes a dead metaphor. In creating the imagery, I was interested, among other things, in the layers of ink. The litho sinks into the page, the letterpress is 'pressed,' the screenprint sits on the surface of the paper."
• Signed by the artist.
• Number: 5/15.