ISBN: 978-1-935084-47-1
\n 110 pages: $25.00
\n December, 2013<\/p>\n
The Oblivion Atlas<\/em><\/b>, a collaboration between Louviere and Vanessa (L + V) and Michael Allen Zell, features a full color design by Louviere + Vanessa with vignette illustrations for the seven short stories by Michael Allen Zell.\u00a0<\/p>\n The Oblivion Atlas<\/em><\/b>\u00a0begins with the simple idea that \u201cmotion must be frozen before being recreated as motion.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0The multi-medium artwork of L + V is set in motion as influence and inspiration for short stories by Michael Allen Zell, and L + V in turn have created new work to serve as backdrop and counterpoint to the stories.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n The Oblivion Atlas<\/em><\/b>\u00a0first came about as a constraint determined by Zell from the initial lines of Jacques Prevert\u2019s\u00a0To Paint A Portrait Of A Bird<\/em><\/b>\u00a0(\u201cFirst paint a cage\/with an open door\u201d), secondly by the attempt at developing a corollary style of frozen-image writing as worthy counterpart to the hypnotic spell cast by both photography and long takes by filmmakers such as Tarkovsky, and ultimately by the specific inspiration of L + V\u2019s fertile decade of photographic art.\u00a0\u00a0The second ballast was formed by L + V\u2019s response to Zell\u2019s stories, with the challenge to embrace elements of interest and uniquely portray them without simply repeating that which had inspired the stories in the first place.\u00a0\u00a0The resulting atlas of text and image have thrown off trappings to recognize what Genet called the universal wound shared uniquely by all, and they have embraced a new thickened form of the texted image and the imaged text.\u00a0\u00a0The Oblivion Atlas\u00a0<\/em><\/b>explores and accumulates an aviary of themes, including dreams; time-sculpting; memory; madness; resistance; nihilism; the frequencies and trajectories of the mind; absorbing\/dissolving; and infinity in a finite space; none of this with cognitive delicacy but rather by nimbly moving through the tension with a sprung step that rumbles as necessary.\u00a0\u00a0New Orleans and Louisiana remain steady companions throughout, not at the usual baseline of easy affiliation, but rather as an active guiding presence treated in a singular manner.\u00a0\u00a0This book is precise but not taut, assertive but not doctrinaire, ambitious but not exclusive, inviting the reader in by its very design and the affirmation that \u201c\u2026the first act of freedom is when the mind says no and the second when it says yes.\u201d<\/p>\n Named in Oxford American\u2019s 2012 \u201cSuperstars of Southern Art\u201d (\u201cenigmatic, emotional, and gritty\u201d), L + V have had recent solo exhibitions at the Ogden Museum of Southern Art and the Polk Museum of Art.\u00a0\u00a0Their work is collected in public and private collections including George Eastman House; Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; Washington and Lee University; Ford Foundation; and the Pitt-Jolie collection.\u00a0\u00a0Zell\u2019s first novel\u00a0Errata\u00a0<\/em><\/b>was a Times-Picayune\/nola.com top 10 book of 2012 (\u201cZell dissolves the familiar dross of New Orleans noir in the potent solvent of his imagination, an alchemical process that yields literary gold.\u201d), and HTML Giant said \u201cThis is, perhaps, one of the smartest contemporary novels that I\u2019ve encountered\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Michael Allen Zell
\n Book Design and Art by Louviere and Vanessa
\n9781935084471
\nFull color design by L+V with illustrations for short stories by Michael Allen Zell.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":68,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"product_brand":[],"product_cat":[16],"product_tag":[45,44,42,43],"class_list":{"0":"post-67","1":"product","2":"type-product","3":"status-publish","4":"has-post-thumbnail","6":"product_cat-lavender-ink","7":"product_tag-fiction","8":"product_tag-illustrations","9":"product_tag-louviere-and-vanessa","10":"product_tag-michael-allen-zell","12":"first","13":"instock","14":"taxable","15":"shipping-taxable","16":"purchasable","17":"product-type-simple","18":"berocket_lgv_grid","19":"berocket_lgv_list_grid"},"yoast_head":"\n