But such as I can be, I will: A Romantic book of excuses

But such as I can be, I will is produced in an edition of seventy five. The deluxe edition is presented in an early 19th-century-style publishers’ binding with marbled paper by Pamela Smith. The standard edition is presented in a paper wrapper. Both are pigment inkjet printed on Ruscombe Mill pale laid handmade paper. The chapbook edition is a single-signature pamphlet laser printed on French Construction whitewash with wrapper pigment inkjet printed on Zerkall German Ingres. The illustration from William Blake’s Night Thoughts used on the Standard wrapper and as the Deluxe frontispiece is courtesy of the Yale Center for British Art, Paul Mellon Collection. Created 2019.

Deluxe edition of 15, 56 pages, 7 x 4 1/4 x 1/4"
Standard edition of 20, 48 pages, 7 x 4 1/4 x 1/8”
Chapbook edition of 40, 48 pages, 7 1/4 x 4 1/4 x 1/4"

But such as I can be, I will: A Romantic book of excuses is excerpted from an 1801 letter written by William Blake to his long-suffering patron Thomas Butts. I imagine the visionary, late in the day and still in his dressing gown, dashing off a quick note, Great Mansplaining his inability to honor his commitments. The letter came to my attention when it was used as the set book for the 2019 Open·Set bookbinding competition.

Text:
Time flies
I labour incessantly
I accomplish not one half of what I intend
I thank you again and again for your generous forbearance
only now I approach the prospect
my seeming neglect
my want of steady perseverance by which want I am still your debtor, and you so much my creditor
labouring
matchless industry
I shall have an opportunity
my abstract folly hurries me often away
who shall deliver me
I endeavour
which you may expect soon which I have nearly completed
Alas! wretched, happy, ineffectual labourer
I, with my whole might, chain my feet to the world of duty
But in vain!
I can be grateful, and I can soon
still unfinished, but is in a finishing way
perhaps, or rather certainly
but such as I can be, I will
I remain, dear Sir, ever yours sincerely

I labour incessantly: a William Blake to do list

Set of two ruled notepads, twenty pages each, inkjet printed onto 70 lb text weight paper. Created 2019.

8 ½ x 3 5/8”
open edition

Finally a realistic to do list. Each sheet is topped with a (non) motivational phrase by 18th century poet William Blake excusing your inability to accomplish any task. The text is excerpted from a letter to Blake’s long-suffering patron Thomas Butts.

Save one as an artists’ book, use the second, gift the third to excuse an unproductive loved one.

Phrases include:
Time flies
I labour incessantly
I accomplish not one half of what I intend
only now I approach the prospect
my seeming neglect
my want of steady perseverance
labouring
matchless industry
I shall have an opportunity
who shall deliver me
I endeavour
which you may expect soon
which I have nearly completed
Alas! wretched, happy, ineffectual labourer
I, with my whole might, chain my feet to the world of duty
But in vain!
still unfinished, but is in a finishing way
perhaps, or rather certainly
but such as I can be, I will

Nevermore Again: Poe Exhumed

Deluxe edition of 25, 44 pages, 6 1/2 x 4 1/4 x 1/4"
Standard edition of 50, 40 pages, 6 3/8 x 4 1/4 x 1/8”
Chapbook edition of 50, 32 pages, 6 3/8 x 4 1/4 x 1/8”

only two remain of the deluxe edition

created 2010

A criminal undone by his own bravado.
A national hero who has no substance.
A prosperous people believing they are immune to the tragedies befalling their neighbors.
A man leaving for a hike in the hills and coming back with an unbelievable story.
A large swath of society falling for a hoax.

Current events mirror tales written by Edgar Allan Poe over one hundred and fifty years ago. Nevermore Again: Poe Exhumed pairs twelve Poe stories with equally spine-tingling stories from the news. The Premature Burial and the struggling economy, The Balloon Hoax and the hunt for weapons of mass destruction, A Tale of The Ragged Mountains and politicians’ dalliances in the Appalachian Mountains and beyond, William Wilson and genetically modified food, The Black Cat and the bravado of a former Illinois governor, The Man that Was Used Up and the meteoric rise of a former Alaska governor.

The typography and design for Nevermore Again: Poe Exhumed are based on the first edition of Poe’s first published work, Tamerlane and Other Poems. Only twelve copies of this modest pamphlet are known to exist of the fifty printed in Boston in 1827. The Standard Edition is presented in a paper wrapper. The construction is based on the first edition of Tamerlane.

The Deluxe Edition is presented in an early 19th-century-style publisher’s binding with marbled paper by Pamela Smith. The endpapers incorporate the design of the wrapper for the Standard Edition. Both the Standard and Deluxe editions are inkjet printed on Ruscombe Mill pale wove handmade paper. Images of the first edition of Tamerlane and Other Poems on the enclosure courtesy of University of Chicago Library, Special Collections Research Center. The Chapbook is a single-signature pamphlet on French Construction whitewash in wrapper of Bugra.

”Although few people today are likely to confuse Edgar Allan Poe with Nostrodamus or to view his stories and poems as predictions of the future, book artist Karen Hanmer has cleverly and forcefully shown Poe’s relevance to today’s world in “Nevermore, Again: Poe Exhumed.”
By showing--with jarring emphasis--the connection between such Poe masterpieces as “The Premature Burial,” “The Masque of the Red Death,” and “The Black Cat” (fourteen stories and poems are referenced) and modern dilemmas or scandals, Hanmer illustrates that some things never change. Unfortunately. In “Nevermore, Again,” themes of hoax, false assurance and security, loose tongues, overreactions based on fear, and misleading facades with no underlying substance in Poe’s tales are linked to modern incidents such as the Iraqi war, political sex scandals, Internet impropriety, and man-made, technology-driven natural disasters.
As in his own day, Poe is read today for the goose-bumps his stories can raise. As “Nevermore, Again” points out, our modern life can raise even more goose-bumps, with consequences far beyond a disturbed sleep. Perhaps nothing in Poe is--or should be--more disturbing than what we are confronted with in the world around us today. “
William K. Finley
Head, Special Collections & University Archives, Jackson Library, The University of North Carolina at Greensboro

The Model Architect: The Panic of ’09

Pigment inkjet prints, calf spine, leather label, title and tooling in gold foil, red acrylic ink edges. Marbled paper by Iris Nevins. Created 2010.

14 x 11 x .5”
edition of 30, 48 pages

Please note this piece is made to order and may not be available for immediate delivery. Normal turn-around time is three months.

The Model Architect: The Panic Of ’09 is based on The Model Architect, Samuel Sloan’s 1852 collection of house plans and instructions to contractors. The new work pairs historical text and illustrations from Sloan’s work with contemporary text from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development’s online Guide to Avoiding Foreclosure. The colophon provides commentary by the artist, noting the effects of speculation and financial collapse in her own neighborhood. The book is bound using the drum leaf structure, but is evocative of a mid 19th century binding in its use of materials and decorative elements: leather spine, marbled paper, decorated edge, gold tooling and titling. The large page size mirrors that of Sloan’s work. The Model Architect: The Panic Of ’09 is one of six winners of the Building by the Book competition sponsored Philadelphia Athenaeum and Philadelphia Center for the Book.

From the colophon:

Samuel Sloan’s The Model Architect was published at the mid point of a century marked by cycles of rampant speculation followed by financial collapse. The Panic of 1857 came on the heels of publication of Sloan’s work, and put a halt to the most active portion of his career. This milieu mirrors what has happened in my own neighborhood of modest homes over the past fifteen years. The transformation began with some owners remodeling their kitchen, or adding a family room or bedroom. Then larger additions came. Ultimately, the houses commanded high prices to be sold as teardowns. Huge new houses were built in their places.

The construction proceeded with increasingly grandiose features; portions of the facade faced with thin sheets of stone, wooden garage doors with cast iron-like fittings, decorative copper accents on the roofs, turrets, lions flanking the brick driveways. Now the house across the street, the house next door, and the house next door to that are all in foreclosure, and soon will be uninhabitable. The lawns grow without interruption. Without electricity and heat the basements fill with water, the pipes burst, the mechanicals are destroyed. Few modest, affordable homes remain in the neighborhood.

1984NOW

Boxed set of five flip books: laser and inkjet prints on acid-free cardstock, buckram-wrapped spine. Books presented in individual mylar sleeves, set also includes archival corrugated box. Created 2017.

2 x 5.5 x 1.25” /ea
Edition of 40

Set of five flip books inspired by the intersection of George Orwell’s 1984 and current events. Phrases from Orwell’s text morph into phrases from the headlines and back again.

Great Again suggests how 1984’s four governmental departments are manifested in 2017 America: Ministry of Truth / Lies, Ministry of Peace / America First, Ministry of Love / Law & Order, Ministry of Plenty / Defund & Privatize

Platform lists three slogans as familiar today as in Orwell’s dystopian society: War is Peace, Freedom is Slavery, Ignorance is Strength

Temperament documents many of the most common (and unconsciously self-referential) presidential words and phrases: Huge, Tremendous, Loser, Out of Control, Bad Hombre, Dangerous, Disaster, Believe Me

Topia is a reminder that one citizen’s Utopia is another’s dystopia, and how easily one can become the other.

Watching explores the seductive quality even the most dangerous leader can possess.

#Great Again #Believe Me

Jacob’s Ladder: Pigment inkjet prints, binders’ board, polypropylene. Photos courtesy of the Library of Congress. Created 2018.

21.5 x 2.5 x .125 extended | 3.5 x 2.5 x .75 closed | inches
54.5 x 6.5 x .5 extended | 9 x 6.5 x 2 closed | cm
Edition of 30, two copies remaining.

From Access Hollywood through the Mueller investigation to white nationalist support, #Great Again #Believe Me documents contemporary American personalities, pronouncements, slogans, scandals, policies and crimes, complemented by the metaphor of a deconstructing US Capitol. Housed in clamshell of archival board.

#Great Again #Believe Me shows Karen Hanmer once again being a 'first responder' to current events. Students in my introductory book arts class were interested in how the structure of the book could change at a moment’s notice, reflecting the transitory nature of our #hashtag world. A book to spark discussion and debate!
—Robert Gore Visual Arts Librarian UCLA Arts Library

Star Poems

Pigment inkjet prints hinged with unbacked book cloth. Created 2008.

6.75x5.75x.75" closed, 17.5x 23" open
Edition of 30

Please note this piece is made to order and may not be available for immediate delivery. Normal turn-around time is three months.

At once vast and minimal, sparse and rich, the night sky has always been a canvas upon which people project their myths and dreams. Star Poems presents quotes that document response to the night sky across the ages by philosophers, artists, and poets from Plato and Byron to contemporary writers, scientists and astronauts. This text is paired with 17th century mythological images of constellation forms and images of early star gazers on a background of a NASA photograph of the Milky Way. The book can be held in the hand and read page by page like a traditional book, can be removed from its jacket and unfolded flat to reference historical astronomical charts or contemporary NASA composite photos, or can be folded into an infinite variety of sculptural shapes.

For our entire existence as a species, we have looked to the heavens. In the night sky we see possibilities, a map to our future, a document of our past. The panorama of deep space comprises a powerful metaphor, and in two books ... the metaphor is used to ample effect both conceptually and structurally. Celestial Navigation and Star Poems share the same structure and compositional background: a series of hinged triangle with start fields printed on deep blue. Each may be read as a traditional accordion fold, formed into myriad sculptural configurations, or unfolded flat as a kind of map referencing historical and contemporary astronomical charts.

Star Poems consists of astronomical quotes by historical and contemporary philosophers, scientists, artists, and poets paired with 17th century images of astronomers and constellations. The cover quote by Lord Byron, 'Ye stars / which are the poetry / of heaven,' is divided in three, with each part placed at the corners of the triangle, inviting the viewer to begin at any of the three corners. The effect is that one may travel in any direction through the vastness of heaven and encounter the profoundness of eternity, as if meaning were embedded in the environs of space itself, to be reflected and mediated through human synthesis.
— Max Yela, Head, Special Collections, University of Wisconsin Milwaukee

Unabridged

Linen thread, some made into sewing supports by the binder; wood boards; repurposed Random House Unabridged Dictionary pages, parchment hooked endleaves. Thread color and wood for boards vary. Created 2020.

approximately 4 x 4 x 13”
Series of 20

In late 2018 I responded to a call for entries to make a book from one volume of a 1910 encyclopedia that would otherwise have been discarded. I viewed the book as a supply of wonderfully thin but surprisingly strong paper with a lovey, subtle pattern. The strength provided by packed sewing on double cords supplemented with endbands with frequent tie-downs transformed the binding into a kind of medieval slinky.

Early in the Pandemic while I listened to my Governor's daily hour-long briefing, I began work on a series of similar but much thicker books, each made from one entire Random House Unabridged Dictionary. The bindings are stripped down to their most elemental structure: paper, linen, wood. Any ornamentation comes only from those materials: the pattern of the text, the tone and grain of the wood, the color of the thread and the sewing supports. I began to vary the later by making my own sewing cord from linen thread using historical rope-making techniques.

Note: Please note these bindings are made to order and may not be available for immediate delivery. Normal turn-around time is six months.

Bookbinding with Numerous Engravings and Diagrams

Edited by Paul N. Hasluck, Grove, Wantage, England: The Black Swan Press, 1992, reprint of 1902 first edition.

On exhibit at the New Bedford Whaling Museum October 16, 2026 - February 15, 2027.

Full goatskin binding with laced-in boards. Trade book disbound, guarded and resewn on flattened cords, leather hinge, marbled paper by Pamela Smith. Hand sewn, silk headbands; three edges sprinkled with blue acrylic ink. Blind title and tooling, acrylic pochoir. Illustrations scanned from the text and laser printed onto goatskin onlays. Illustrations scanned from the text and inkjet printed onto Mohawk Superfine cover, then hand cut into pop-ups, are sewn inside each of the text block’s ten signatures. Bound 2014.

8.5 x 5.5 x 2”

The design for this binding is inspired by the text’s charming vintage illustrations, many of which feature disembodied hands performing common binding tasks. Tooling and pochoir further illuminate aspects of structure and process: beating the text block prior to sewing, sawing in sewing stations, lacing on boards, turning in and forming corners, tooling, and the figure-eight motion of the polishing iron.