The Shape and Color of Research Project is nearly unique in its effort to make evident the relationship between research and the artistic process. My task in this project has been to interview the participating artists and to investigate with them the influences that Special Collections at the Golda Meir Library, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, has had on their art making. These interviews have revealed emerging categories of influence. By exploring the resulting works of the fourteen artists in this exhibit, the links between the artists' visions and the role of research become more evident.
While the focus of this exhibit is unusual, the use of illustrated texts as a resource for research in art making is not. As an elementary school art teacher for over 15 years, I carefully collected such resources for my young students. Using picture books of a narrative nature as well as illustrated books concerned with media and process, my students could answer many questions that arose as they worked with art materials each week. So I began my own research on cognitive development through visual arts in a study replicating the work of Michael Parsons and his colleagues. The Parsons study resulted in a description of the aesthetic development of students from kindergarten through twelfth grade using reproductions of selected museum art works for responses to a range of prompts. In my study, I limited the participants to a small group of first and second graders and substituted five picture books for responses to the original prompts. The results of the research showed a remarkable increase in cognitive level as displayed by my young students. My conclusion was that the richness of the picture book as well as its appropriateness for the young students greatly influenced their responses.
When I began working with undergraduates, the use of illustrated texts continued. My own use of Special Collections at the Golda Meir Library often focused on artists' books. Class trips to the library were arranged at times when fine-press or artists' books were being exhibited. These served as a resource for assignments involving bookmaking in my art education courses.
More specific to this exhibition was an experience involving journal writing in an Art Survey Course. I have done research (Packard, 1992) on the process of using dialogue journals to promote cognitive development, particularly in art education. My colleague, Leslie Vansen, invited me to offer her students the opportunity to engage in journaling with me. These journals involved a written dialogue between the student and the researcher/professor through the use of prompts. As part of the journal-writing experience, I directed students to spend time viewing a Special Collections exhibit of famous texts, including Uncle Tom's Cabin, The Canterbury Tales, and Dante's Inferno. These texts were illustrated by noted artists and in each case there were at least two different examples. Students could compare the use of media, style, and subject matter in the illustrations as we wrote back and forth about their observations and opinions about the illustrations. In every case, I insisted that the students give well thought out reasons for their opinions. Often the dialogues helped students develop their reasons and made apparent a number of perspectives exhibited in different artists' interpretations. At the invitation of Max Yela, Special Collections Librarian, I presented my research process to the university community using the section of the journals that focused on the Special Collections exhibit. The process was fairly straightforward and involved revisiting the data and 'listening for emerging categories' from all the participants. I have used the same process in reviewing the data collected from artists whose works are featured in this exhibit.
The categories that have emerged are: resources that inform renderings of images; resources that were copied for reproduction; resources to expand knowledge of process/media; resources for content; and resources that serve as models. With these categories in mind, I returned to the original resources listed by the artists to personally observe the connections that had been brought to my attention during the interviews. In many cases, artists used the resources in more than one way. I have made every effort to confine my writing to resources that came from Special Collections, although the artists often used resources from the library's general collection and from sources outside the Golda Meir Library.

Resources that Inform Rendering of Images

Jo Anna Poehlmann's elegant, boxed artist's book was inspired by a trip to the Netherlands. The tulips and small creatures that adorn the tall narrow pages continue the artist's interest in drawing nature in the fashion of the old Masters as seen in museums across Europe. Upon Poehlmann's return from the Netherlands, she realized that it would be useful to have more visual information to draw upon, and she turned to librarian Max Yela for resources. A rare 1597 publication by John Gerarde entitled The Herball or Generall Historie of Plantes contained engravings of many plants and among them were examples of tulips. Focusing on red and white parrot tulips, Poehlmann used drawing, photocopying, and watercolor to create an edition of accordion-fold books. The boxes she used for the edition are from Japan and once contained a collection of eggs.
Resources from Special Collections also informed Maureen LaWent when memories from her visits to a cabin in the American Legion State Forest in northern Wisconsin needed renewal. Over a three-year period, LaWent worked on a painting that recorded an encounter with a young doe found at the side of the highway and, a year later, the observation of an immature turkey vulture and immature golden eagle feeding on a deer carcass. LaWent found herself struggling with proportions and positioning of the subject matter. Yela directed her to A Handbook of the Anatomy of Animals, a portfolio of drawings from life attributed to Wilhelm Ellenberger, Hermann Braun, and Hermann Dittrich. The drawings show deer carefully rendered to scale, as well as drawings of the skeleton and muscle tissue. In addition, LaWent used books by John James Audubon and Rex Brasher to capture the form, proportions, and color of the turkey vulture and golden eagle. She found it particularly interesting that Audubon worked with dead birds painted in his studio, while Brasher worked in the field with live birds as his subjects.
Revealing the sacred in nature, Irene Mitkus spent time poring over the illustrations in a facsimile edition of La Biblia de Alba, a book produced by Moses Arragel between 1422 and 1430. Evident in Mitkus's Book of Sacred Trees, are motifs of leaves and fruit that resemble the tree forms in Arragel's Bible. The shape and texture of the tree trunks in her linoleum-block prints are particularly reminiscent of these early renderings. Sadly, Irene Mitkus died in November of 2000, so I was unable to talk with her, but I am well aware that she left behind a reputation as a conservation binder and book conservator, especially for the Milwaukee Public Museum. This book also exemplifies her love of binding.
Another source used by Mitkus was an 1857 publication, The North American Sylva by François André Michaux. Without the opportunity to interview Mitkus, I began looking through this text for the trees featured in her book. The renderings of leaves and fruit in Michaux's text were realistic in detail and color, while Mitkus embellished her renderings with references to spiritual myths associated with various species of trees. In this way she continued an interest in myths connected to certain trees that began with stories of the sacred oak that were part of her Lithuanian heritage (see the section on Resources for Content for further discussion).
In the sculpture by Ney Tait Fraser one can see the influences of her primary resource, Black Elk Speaks. She not only fused written descriptions from this book into her sculpture, but she also used the book's illustrations by Standing Bear to inform her work. Fraser's wooden panels are fitted together and covered with ceramic tiles and river stones. The panels represent the four corners of the world using different colors for each corner as described by Black Elk. Each section is inscribed with symbols specific to each of the four compass points. In addition, every panel includes depictions of Rainbow People, the magic teepee, butterflies representing the dead, and horses. All these images are described through word and image by Black Elk and Standing Bear.
Pamela Schermer used reproductions of Baroque Italian and Dutch still lifes found in books to inform her painting of ripe fruit on the verge of spoiling. The collection Nature Morte del Seicento e Del Settecento edited by Patrizia Consigli Valente extended Schermer's experiences with Baroque still life paintings in museums here and abroad. While Schermer's depiction of light and her use of certain colors reveal contemporary influences, the art historical references were mentally stored so that she could paint from memory. Of particular interest is the role of the landscapes that create the background for the still life compositions. The dark backgrounds of the Baroque paintings are lightened to reveal lush vegetation, waterfalls, lakes, and a variety of birds.
In contrast to the very literal translation of resources for Schermer's images, Valerie Christell "found" the images in her artwork in a very unexpected way. She came to the project with two ideas: to investigate a monograph collection of Francisco Goya images, and to find out more about shamanism as a pathway to new directions. She took notes on the Goya images and felt she had completed what she needed from that resource. Following her curiosity about the role of shamans in Native American culture, Christell requested books from Special Collections that might inform her. Rather than getting descriptions of shamans and shamanism, she found that the resources from Special Collections' holdings of American Indian literature recorded the actual teachings of shamans. As she read, she tried to make sense of the stories that seemed confusing and foreign. It was not the narrative nature of the stories that struck Christell, but rather the metaphors in the myths and a sense that concepts were being alluded to, but not directly revealed. In an effort to make sense of her readings, she began keeping a journal, writing down quotes. At this time her research was disconnected from art making. It was during this process that Christell had a vision that needed to be drawn-she described the vision as "abstract images of the unseeable."
Pertinent to the work in this exhibit, Christell began reading Healers on the Mountain by Teresa Pijoan (1993), a collection of Native American writings, including myths. At some point after reading an Inuit myth entitled "Raven," Christell felt compelled to record another vision she had of a space defined by slender vertical shapes. In the story of Raven Man it is revealed that he must carry sacred sticks used for starting ceremonial fires. He wearies of flying with the fire sticks and chooses to go inside a whale cow. Much to his surprise he finds himself in a warm dry room where the ceiling is held up by the whale's spine and the walls are made of the whale's ribs. A tube runs along the backbone, feeding an oil lamp that sits on a table at which sits a beautiful woman named Inua, the whale cow's spirit. The story continues with a series of events that are metaphorical and difficult to understand. The space of the whale's belly and the concept of ceremonial fire appear to be connected to the work Christell completed for this project. Like the myth itself, the work raises questions of meaning, especially considering that the artist can not explain how the image relates to her own sense of reality.
In each of the above descriptions, Special Collections resources served as information for the artists. In the next category, artists appropriate images from the resources they used.

Resources Copied for Reproduction

The significance of insects influenced Joann Engelhart's use of Special Collections. She began a journey back from a series of personal tragedies to find the 'core' of her work. Childhood photographs, quilting, and gardening were an essential part of the process. The photographs prompted a need for her to plant a garden of her own like the one her father had tended, and one that she had enjoyed. When her garden became infested with insects she turned, out of frustration, to a study of the images of insects. After some research, Engelhart began to rethink the role of tiny mites and their essential role in recycling. In this light, she investigated Francesco Redi's Esperienze Intorno alla Generazione Degl'Insetti (1668), a treatise on insects, especially lice.
Mites and lice took on new significance as Engelhart learned of their essential work in recycling. Through a complex process, she prepared fabric to create a reliquary in which the reproduced image of a louse is cut open and inserted with rosebuds reminiscent of the picture of Christ revealing his bleeding heart. This image is part of a triptych Engelhart created as she journeyed from childhood memories of gardens, woods, fields, and creeks, creating a garden of her own where she confronted insects that appeared to be enemies, but were transformed into valued adversaries worthy of celebration in her art work.
With a formalist concern for the addition of line in her printmaking, Cheryl Olson-Sklar also used Redi's text as resource for images in her artwork. Olson-Sklar's printmaking career has resulted in works where color and shape are of primary importance. In looking for new material, she found herself drawn to Redi's seventeenth-century treatise. Her attraction to the illustrations of insects was stimulated not only by the impact of line, but also by the large visual presentation of insects and the details of their bodies. Furthermore, each illustration was elaborately titled with captions in banners of flowing ribbons. All these elements can be seen in her prints that are composed of layers of images from printing plates representing a range of processes. During the process of selecting these images, Olson-Sklar was surprised to discover that the insects represented in such an elegant manner in Redi's book were, in fact, poultry lice. Gradually, she came to understand the importance of these tiny beings to the environment. And so the addition of these linear elements took on a new significance.
Stephanie Copoulos-Selle used the three-volume collection of Commodore Matthew C. Perry's Narrative of the Expedition of an American Squadron to the China Sea and Japan (1856) in a variety of ways. In the sections that follow, I will describe her use of this narrative as a model for her own three-volume artist's book and how the resource contributed to process/media. Pertinent to this category, however, is Copoulos-Selle's appropriation of images from Perry's book, as well as the book's page layout. A broad range of other books on Japanese prints, Japanese painted fans, works of Hiroshige, and pictures of Japanese life contributed additional material. For example, Copoulos-Selle created endpapers for her artist's book using Japanese decorative patterns reproduced from these resources. This paper was then over-printed with her own narrative. In this way the images create a sort of background for a three volume "expedition" of Lola, Copoulos-Selle's heroine, into the world of baseball. More than a background, they create a kind of visual tension as one tries to make connections, enjoying puns such as star charts from the China Sea and "stars" from baseball cards, and pondering the wonder of the human spirit that is drawn to the unknown.
Another work of art that is filled with visual tension is the compelling image of a starving child combined with ceramic "paper dolls" in the mixed media work of Carl Hedman. The image of the child is photocopied from the 1999 Pennyroyal Caxton printing of the Holy Bible, designed and illustrated entirely by Barry Moser. The juxtaposition of the two images create a struggle between the carefully rendered lines of the print appropriated from wood engravings Moser created for his impressive undertaking, and the playful rendering of paper dolls in clay that Hedman added. It is this struggle that engages the viewer to contemplate other struggles suggested by the work. Lifting the image from Moser's monumental work seems to be a tribute to the artist as Hedman calls attention to the power of that image. It is important to note that Carl Hedman works regularly with young children in a neighborhood school and has deep concerns for many of those children.
Steve Sellars became intrigued by references another artist had made to his children by inscribing messages to them on his sculpture. In Sellars's large format photographs, images of flowers, flower parts, and other organic forms found in seventeenth-century natural history books are used to make visual connections to his children. These images, like the messages that inspired them, are superimposed over Sellars's photographs of a mannequin that a colleague found in the studio where she was teaching. The mannequin has the odd characteristic of having the top of its head hinged so that it can be opened. The organic images are carefully positioned over this form.
When asked about the experience of selecting the images to be appropriated, Sellars exclaimed that it was fascinating to open books that perhaps no one had opened in decades, and discovering images that may not have been seen for a hundred years. Indeed, this may be the case for the particular books Sellars used for the work in this project, for example Antoni van Leeuwenhoek's Arcana Naturae published in 1695 and its companion text, Continuatio Arcanorum Naturae Detectorum published in 1697.
The artists in this category involving mechanically or digitally copied images reproduced in their work, sought out these images for a variety of reasons. There is variety as well in the processes and media that books in Special Collections offered to this group of artists.

Resources for Process/Media

Kyoung Ae Cho has made an amazing use of Hough's Encyclopaedia of American Woods (1957). This sixteen-volume set contains thin slices of wood mounted between folded pages. Characteristics of the wood slice can be observed by holding an individual page up to the light where the translucent nature of the slices reveal the grain. In a process that Cho described as having a ceremonial quality, she patiently sliced a veneer from a single piece of wood that could allow consideration of all nature. The slice of wood was then cut into small squares reminiscent of fabric for miniature quilts and the grain of the wood was enhanced by burning "dots" along the grain lines. Those lines were seen by Cho as a celebration of life-something to be cherished in all of nature. The tiny squares were then meticulously enclosed between two layers of sheer, white fabric with lines of fine stitching in white thread. Once completed, the "quilt" was mounted and framed with unfinished wood. Many find Cho's work consistent with the attention to detail, use of nature, and formal composition qualities found in other Asian art forms. However, Cho revealed that as a student in Korea her work was described as western in feel. She went on to explain that since arriving in the United States1988 to complete an MFA at Cranbook, she has been drawn to the exploration of Asian theology that permeates her thoughts.
As noted in the first section, Valerie Christell requested a two-volume collection of sketches by Francisco Goya as a way to inform her rendering of images. These resources also informed her use of media and process. There is a definite connection between media and process in Goya's sketches of landscapes despite the fact that for Goya they serve as a background to human interactions rather than as the focus of the work itself. As I recall my first experience of Christell's drawings, the space seemed to be ready for a ceremony that would invite human interactions-not the violence of Goya's experiences, but a gathering for peace and reconciliation.
Pam Schermer's use of Valente's Nature Morte del Seicento e Del Settecento extended to an analysis of the way the paint was put down on canvas by Baroque artists. Using color photocopies as a reference in her studio, Schermer not only studied paint application but also the compositions of the earlier paintings. Through her studies she sought to wed her love of the history of painting with current artistic expressions in order to invite the viewer to revisit nature through a synthesized perspective.
For Darlene Hagopian, it was not images she sought in Special Collections, but a process to organize those she already had. Her desire to present issues of human rights and the need to save the planet resulted in her amassing an overwhelming number of images. Poring over book after book led to artist's block, until she realized that it was the idea of visual overload itself that most intrigued her. The artist's book she created for the project became a record of the moment between research and production as a state of confusion. In an effort to organize materials, Max Yela suggested a 1998 publication by Australian filmmaker, Peter Greenaway entitled 100 Allegories to Represent the World, a modern day emblem book. Double- spread pages are organized with illustrations and limited text around a theme. In Greenaway's book allegorical figures are presented full-page on the right-hand side with a smaller collection of illustrations on the left-hand side arranged like cards for a Tarot reading.
While Hagopian's presentation is not as orderly as Greenaway's, it is the very disorder of images that evokes the state of confusion she wished to represent. The small size of the book adds a sense that this is a preliminary venture into a new project that has evolved from pages and pages of research. In fact, when I questioned where she saw herself going in the future she admitted she wanted to narrow her concerns, create a new book with better paper, solve construction problems, and reformat the whole project.
Steven Krueger was drawn to his religious heritage in the creation of an artist's book and reliquaries. He used Special Collections as a resource for the process/media in his book depicting selected Catholic saints. One such source was a book of saints attributed to the Benedictine Monks of St. Augustine's Abbey dated 1677. Each page has an elaborate and detailed etching as well as a sentence or two about the saint. Simplifying the illustrations, Krueger used a rubber printing "plate" to create stamps with emblems for his saints that suggest each saint's role as patron. As noted above in reference to Darlene Hagopian's organization of images, the resource for Steve Krueger's emblem book layout was Greenaway's 100 Allegories to Represent the World. Facing each illustration is a page of text explaining who the saint is. The layout is justified to reflect the same-sized space as the "emblem." Each double spread of emblem and text is reflected in a separate reliquary object. For example, Saint Paula is the patron saint of widows and her emblem is a calla lily. The text identifies the saint, while the reliquary holds the fine black veil worn by his grandmother at his grandfather's funeral.
We have seen how artists not only used images from Special Collections for both information and appropriation of images, but also to influence their use of media and processes. While the use of selected texts for their content seems similar to the first category, I believe there is a subtle difference.

Resources for Content

Irene Mitkus not only found the resources in Special Collections useful for images in her artist's book Sacred Trees, she looked to the collection for appropriate text as well. In a chapter from Black Elk Speaks, Black Elk tells the story of the origin of the cottonwood tree. A village of men, women, and children were sick and dying when Black Elk visited them in his vision. He is given a stick and told to have the people rise up and follow him to a place where he plants the stick in the ground. The stick is transformed into the cottonwood tree and the health of the people in their new village is restored. This information may have influenced Mitkus's selection of the tree as sacred. Black Elk's words appear here and in other sections of her book as companion text to her illustrations.
Another resource has an even more intriguing connection to Mitkus's book. Frenchman François André Michaux published North American Sylva in 1857. This text reveals that the European Ash was believed to have special powers. Michaux reports ancient lore that a mixture of ground roots or leaves and milk were an "antidote for the poison of reptiles." I suspect that Mitkus found this fact intriguing and it influenced her choice of a quote from Norse mythology that was included with the illustration of the Ash: "More snakes lie beneath the Ash Yggdrasil than an old fool thinks."
In a similar fashion, Steve Krueger drew on information from texts about saints to inform the content that appears with each of the emblems for the selected saints. Krueger lists no less than eleven books on saints and emblems in his resource list.
The content for the reliquaries was influenced in a different way. Krueger wanted to expand the impact of the little book that presented the saints through illustration and text. He was inspired by finding clothing that related to several of his saints, and from there began a search for additional items of clothing. This led to the title of the complex work-Holy Raiment. For the reliquary presentation, Krueger obtained large bell jars. He added brass plates to the bases, identifying the saint.
As mentioned earlier in this essay, Ney Tait Fraser used the words of Black Elk and the illustrations of Standing Bear to inform the images on the surfaces of her tiles. However, it seems appropriate to return to the use of Black Elk Speaks for the general content of her sculpture-the four corners of the world. This concept is presented and developed throughout the text, and had a strong impact on Fraser's choice of content for her work.
In a similar way, Kyoung Ae Cho revealed that the wood used in her work was from one section of a tree. Yet it was meant to represent all of nature. In the Encyclopedia of American Wood, several species are represented. Yet, as Cho pointed out, it is only a small sliver of each species that is used to represent the whole. This idea of reduction is certainly a common element in Cho's work and, it would appear, the idea of reduction in her source text was not lost on her.
In the last section, the images were not appropriated directly from the resources, but rather served as models for the presentation of the work of art.

Resource as a Model

It is important to note that Special Collections contains a sizable collection of fine-press publications and artist's books. These handmade objects, which served as a resource for my undergraduates, also served the artists who chose this form for their work in this exhibition. For the purposes of this essay, I have not included those resources nor did I find them on the lists some of the artists provided. However, I wish to acknowledge this valuable asset for students of the book arts of all ages and talents.
In the most obvious use of the resource as model, Stephanie Copoulos-Selle challenged herself to use Commodore Perry's expedition to the China Sea and Japan as a model for her three-volume edition of Lola's experience with baseball. The first volume of Perry's book is a narrative of the trip, a captain's journal including his misconceptions and biases. The second volume describes artifacts observed during the trip. The third volume is a collection of star charts as seen from the China Sea. It was Copoulos-Selle's feeling that the character of Lola paralleled Perry's naivete about the experience of another culture. For Perry it was the culture of the Japanese people; for Lola it was the culture of baseball.
In the first volume Lola describes the experience of a little league ball game, an adult game in a league made up of artists, and a professional league game at Milwaukee's County Stadium-the Brewers vs. the Cincinnati Reds. The description not only described the game, but also the food, drink, clothing of spectators, and other aspects of these events. Her text was informed by both observation and interviews. In addition she photographed people in poses similar to those Perry recorded.
In the second volume she focused on illustrations of artifacts. These were scanned from a range of sources outside of Special Collections. The illustrations were overprinted on paper that had baseball statistics on it.
For the third volume, a pun was the format, and published catalogues of baseball cards were used for illustrations of "stars." This attention to detail in modeling her work after the volumes of Perry's expedition is remarkable and I have only given you a sense of it. In fact, each revisiting of Copoulos-Selle's work of art revealed further references.
Though less obvious, Kyoung Ae Cho's display of wood samples encased in sheer fabric that allows the wood's translucent quality to be seen is modeled directly on the pages of the resource she selected. While her piece is a two dimensional work of art and not a book form, the reference is unmistakable.
In Pamela Schermer's paintings, there is great intentionality to model her paintings after the still life paintings found in the book compiled by Patrizia Consigli Valente. The reason is clear when one reads her artist's statement. Schermer wishes to express her love of the history of painting and an ecstatic immersion in nature by invoking the illusionistic forms of seventeenth-century models.
In conclusion, all fourteen artists have made apparent, in varying degrees, their use of resources from Special Collections for the works of art they created for The Shape and Color of Research Project. There is an additional resource that would be impossible to fully document. That resource is the knowledgeable staff of Special Collections and most especially, Max Yela. It has been my pleasure to work with all of them.

Myrna Packard
Alverno College
Milwaukee, Wisconsin