Marjon Mudde – Le chemin de la petite vicinalité (Country roads)

FOBA 2021 Juried Exhibition

Completed 2014
Editions: 3
Dimensions closed: 12.5” x 8.5” x 3.5”
Materials: Wood, paper, linen fabric, leather, brass, cotton thread
Artist resides in: Lauzerte, France 

The title Le chemin de la petite vicinalité is an old French expression indicating country roads. The setting is the French Alps, 19th century. There is where I would like to have lived. During an artist residency in the French Alps, invited by the Public library of the Département des Hautes-Alpes in 2013, I spend three months studying landscape, costume, architecture, animals, plants, and history of the region. Taking many sketches and notes, meeting locals. And climbing those mountains, bearing the marks of pastoral life of the past. 

I made an edition of three in my studio, typesetting, engraving, and printing color linocuts. I embroidered the paper prints on linen fabric pages; etched and sculpted the brass elements for the Roman-inspired binding that consists of wooden covers and leather straps.

Local roads in the mountains are depicted, but there is more to it. The book also shows the road of life: childhood, adolescence, adulthood, and old age. 

Marjon Mudde (Lauzerte, France)

Marjon Mudde is a book artist and engraver from Dutch origin and has been living and working in France since 1983. After earning a degree in printmaking at a Dutch school of art, she was trained in Paris as a printer and engraver by Atelier Lacourière-Frélaut and Tanguy Garric. Marjon has received several awards in printmaking and bookmaking. She has created more than 50 editions of artists books, which are widely collected by public libraries in France. 

She is a teacher of workshops for amateurs and professionals. She currently works with typography, etching, drypoint, lino and woodcut, and papermaking. Additionally she does experimentations based on ancient bookbinding techniques such as coptic and roman. 

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