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Books as Theater
By Marci Janas
OCTOBER 1, 1999--Evocations and Forgotten Places will include at least one of Audra Skuodas's books. A combination of illustration and text--quotes, observations, ruminations--the books trace the trajectory of her ideas, of the intellectual and spiritual momentum she is riding.
"I work six months on books incessantly," she says; "Then I work six months on the paintings." She is careful to point out that the two genres are not mutually exclusive; the books and canvas are "synonymous. It's a type of investiture. In the books I can use words."
Skuodas began making books--and giving them away to friends and family--while she was an art student. The craft took on deeper significance when her children were young, and she wanted to "give them little wisdom quotients and understandings." As her children grew older, her books became richer and more profound--highly evolved imagistic life studies. Skuodas has established a legacy: Her daughter, Cadence, a dancer in London, also makes books.
Skuodas once wrote that her books "are not meant to be what has come to be referred to as 'artists' books.' The image is the primary cohesion, concentration, and distillation of sensibility . . . . The books become their own theater."
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