Staff Pick of the Week

For my Staff Pick, I would love to show you Word for Word by Minneapolis book artist Jody Williams. This book was published under her imprint Flying Paper Press in a limited edition of 100 copies in 2001.  

Jody Williams (1956-2023) was a Minnesota-based book artist and teacher who focused on small artist books and collages. She taught at the Minnesota Center for Book Arts and the Minneapolis College of Art and Design, and gave workshops across the US and Europe. Her books often concern temporality and space, and are universally precise.  

Our head of Special Collections often talks about the concept of play in relation to books and book artists. Word for Word is a wonderful embodiment of that concept.   

The book arts are as much concerned with form as with text, and this book combines the two into a tongue-in-cheek whole. With a Scrabble-like tile allowing the reader to pull out the rest of the book from its box, the game is incorporated from the very beginning. This book laughs at word play and sets the scene in a rigorous game of scrabble. Placing pictograph tiles alongside the more classic letter tiles, Williams plays with the game itself, pointing out the value of different words (or lack thereof).  

This book made me giggle when I first read it, and I hope it also brings some delight to your day!  

View more posts on Artists Books.

View more posts on books by Jody Williams.

View more Staff Picks.

– Elizabeth, Special Collections Graduate Intern