Bouchard hand-typeset the lyrics of "Ocian in View" from her song cycle Songs of Lewis & Clark, arranging the text in a way that visually represents the melodic structure of the song. (As the melody goes up or down, the syllables are placed on higher or lower lines of type.) The resulting text treatment is reminiscent of a landscape. This letterpress piece was printed on a Vandercook press at The Center for Book Arts in New York, NY.
Performance of Songs of Lewis & Clark at The American Folk Art Museum in New York City, April 2009.
Songs of Lewis & Clark is a song cycle setting the journals of Lewis and Clark to music. With lyrics taken directly from the journals, the songs reveal moments of awe, reflection, humor and joy during the course of the 1804-1806 expedition through the newly purchased Louisiana territory.
Listen to the full album at music.sarabouchard.com. A special-edition CD is also available for purchase at Sara’s online store.
See also Ocian In View!, a letterpress print of lyrics from the song cycle.
Songs of Lewis & Clark by Sara Bouchard, released 08 November 2008 1. Antelope 2. Northern Light 3. This Little Fleet 4. The Grizzly Bear 5. Runaway Squaw 6. Our Dutifull Children 7. I Beheld the Rocky Mountains 8. Sandstone Clifts 9. Shineing Mountains 10. Gates of the Rocky Mountains 11.
Urban Plant Research is a collaborative project with Berlin-based artist Leslie Kuo, dedicated to investigating plants in cities around the world. A collaborative booklet Ein Lichtenberger Herbarium was published by Lichtenberg Studios in Berlin, Germany in 2014. It features hi-res scans of wild plants the two artists collected and pressed during walks in the Berlin neighborhood of Lichtenberg. Each specimen was paired with a snippet of text in German and English regarding the plant's potential use.
From "Cats Lap With Just Tip of the Tongue, Engineers Find," a New York Times article by Nicholas Wade:
What happens is that the cat darts its tongue, curving the upper side downward so that the tip lightly touches the surface of the water. The tongue is then pulled upward at high speed, drawing a column of water behind it.
Just at the moment that gravity finally overcomes the rush of the water and starts to pull the column down — snap! The cat’s jaws have closed over the jet of water and swallowed it.
This sound piece was named in tribute to Batman, the cat belonging to Open Source Gallery in Brooklyn, NY. Open Source's former building was destroyed in an accidental fire which occurred on November 12, 2010, just a few doors down from the artist’s studio. Disoriented, Batman - a black and white tomcat who'd been king of the block - disappeared for a few days. An article appeared in the Science Times that day with new information on how cats lap. Part of it was woven into this piece.
Holy Smoke, Batman! was installed in Open Source's exhibition ASSOCIATED which took place in April, 2011, throughout an adjacent building that had been severely damaged by the fire.