“Walter Hamady Search Engine” 2011 The Cary Collection

[48] pp.

Corbett vs. Dempsey

2011

9″ x 7″

Stapled wraps

Walter Hamady is a legend among artist book designers. Since 1964, he has run Perishable Press, where he published ingenious, immaculate, intricate small-edition books featuring poetry by luminaries such as Robert Creeley and Paul Blackburn. He has often referred to books as “the Trojan Horse of art,” thinking of the way they sneak artistic ideas into a familiar, handleable format. All along, Hamady, who is based in rural Wisconsin, made collages and assemblages, equally astonishing in conception and execution. In CvsD’s Art Chicago booth, Hamady’s fascinating, neo-Dada boxes, built of deconstructed cameras and all sorts of fetishistic materials and then mounted in cigar boxes (making them book-like diptychs), will have pride of place along with select examples of the artist’s Gabberjabs, which are virtuosic books that completely blur the distinction between design and art in the bound context. A 48-page catalog including an essay by Robert Cozzolino will be available.


Walter Samuel Haatoum Hamady (September 13, 1940 – September 13, 2019) was an American artist, book designer, papermaker, poet and teacher. He is especially known for his innovative efforts in letterpress printing, bookbinding, and papermaking. In the mid-1960s, he founded The Perishable Press Limited and the Shadwell Papermill, and soon after joined the faculty at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, where he taught for more than thirty years.