Flora. First edition.

Mount Horeb, Wisconsin: Perishable Press (Walter Hamady), 1990. Oblong small folio. 26 x 33 cm (10¼ x 13"), wood boards with vellum spine, original green cloth clamshell box with decorations in blind. No. 36 of 125 copies.Collation: 7 blank leaves of different types of handmade paper, 22 leaves of illustrations and text; long manuscript presentation by Hamady to his friend J.F. Holly, and 5 further blank leaves of different types of handmade paperThe 114th book of the press. This copy with a warm inscription from publisher Walter Hamady on rear blank.Ann McGarrell’s selection of poems, Flora: Poems, with illustrations by Jack Beal, printed in 1990 by Walter Hamady at his Perishable Press in Mt. Horeb, Wiscosnin. This is the 114th book from the Perishable Press, produced in an edition of 125 copies.and hand-printed in Sabon type, cast at Stempel Type Foundry, on a variety of different papers, including Twinrocker, Hamady’s own handmade Shadwell paper, and several Japanese papers, including Tan, Skamoto, Kumoi, and Kurotoni. The binding of wood and vellum is by Kent Kasuboske with sewing assistance from book artist and conservator Marta Gomez.McGarell’s content is a “recollection of four friends’ excursion from Umbria through various French and Italian places, with digressive reflections upon matters of gourmandise, botany, beloved works of art & amourous play.“ Our copy of Flora: Poems is signed by both the poet and the artist.Jack Beal was born in Richmond, Virginia in 1931. He studied at the Norfolk Division of the College of William and Mary and the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. A grant from the National Endowment for the Arts in 1972 underscores his long list of accomplishments. The Art Institute of Boston awarded Beal an honorary Doctorate of Fine Arts in 1992 and in 1994 Hollins College in Virginia awarded him a Doctorate of Humane Letters. The American realist painter has lectured at over 100 schools, universities and museums, including University of Indiana, Purdue University, University of Wisconsin and Cooper Union. Beal lives and works in New York City and Oneonta, New York. Beal is best known for his paintings, murals and fine draftsmanship. In the early 1960’s, he courageously renounced abstract expressionism for realism. He is among the diverse painters of “New Realism” who arose during the late 1960’s. He is more closely aligned to Philip Pearlstein and Alfred Leslie than to the Photo-Realists.Particularly noteworthy are his compositions of the figure in interior environments filled with complex patterned fabrics, diagonal thrust and a point of view slightly below eye level. Publications that document his evolution as an artist include Eric Shanes’ monograph Jack Beal, 1993; John Arthur’s Realists at Work, 1983; and Mark Strand’s Art of the Real, 1983. More than fifteen solo exhibitions at Allan Frumkin Gallery, Frumkin/Adams Gallery, and George Adams Gallery in New York and Chicago, as well as numerous international group exhibitions, have celebrated Beal’s work since 1965. Four murals on The History of American Labor are among his national commissions. It took nearly three years to paint them. When they were complete in 1977, they were installed in the Department of Labor Building in Washington, D.C. In New York, Beal is represented in the prestigious collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Whitney Museum, Museum of Modern Art, and the Neuberger Museum. Other museums that include Beal in their collections are the Art Institute of Chicago; Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco; National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.; Philadelphia Museum of Art; and Walker Art Center, Minneapolis. Brunswick Corporation, Ciba-Geigy Corporation, and Philip Morris Collection are among his patrons. More recently he has completed two mosaic murals for the Times Square Station of the New York subways. In 1995, Beal collaborated with Stewart & Stewart to do a screenprint. Tulip Angélique was drawn en plein air by the artist in the pink border garden of the Stewart’s terrace, not far from their Bloomfield Hills, Michigan studio. The gracefully simple composition of Tulip Angélique vacillates between abstraction and realism. It is characteristically Beal — a point of view slightly below eye level, articulate contour lines and dynamic diagonal thrust. Ann McGarrell spun her surroundings into verse. Everyday life, politics, personal tragedies and even roadway accidents found their way into her poems. Wife to the accomplished painter and printmaker James McGarrell, she was a noted translator, having won in 1997 the prestigious PEN Renato Poggioli Prize for her version of Vittoria Ronchey’s Il volto di Iside (The Face of Isis). After high school she enrolled at Occidental College in Los Angeles, and in 1953, she graduated and became a story editor at the movie production company C.V. Whitney Pictures. Her husband’s career took them across the United States and several other countries. Ann and James McGarrell lived in Oregon, then Indiana, then St. Louis, and finally in Newbury, NH. She died in 2016.Walter Hamady (born 1940) is an American artist, book designer, papermaker, poet and teacher. He is especially known for his innovative efforts in letterpress printing, bookbinding, and papermaking exemplified in the productions of The Perishable Press Limited and the Shadwell Papermill, founded by Hamady in the mid-1960s. In 1966 Hamady joined the faculty of the University of Wisconsin, Madison where he would teach papermaking, letterpress printing, and bookbinding for more than three decades.Walter Hamady (born 1940) is an American artist, book designer, papermaker, poet and teacher. He is especially known for his innovative efforts in letterpress printing, bookbinding, and papermaking exemplified in the productions of The Perishable Press Limited and the Shadwell Papermill, founded by Hamady in the mid-1960s. In 1966 Hamady joined the faculty of the University of Wisconsin, Madison where he would teach papermaking, letterpress printing, and bookbinding for more than three decades.Walter Hamady (born 1940) is an American artist, book designer, papermaker, poet and teacher. He is especially known for his innovative efforts in letterpress printing, bookbinding, and papermaking exemplified in the productions of The Perishable Press Limited and the Shadwell Papermill, founded by Hamady in the mid-1960s. In 1966 Hamady joined the faculty of the University of Wisconsin, Madison where he would teach papermaking, letterpress printing, and bookbinding for more than three decades.