The Sensitive and Vegetable Souls:
A Bestiary by Sara Press

Handmade in an edition of 30 books.

This is a family heirloom from a parallel world where Human is only one, and quite the youngest, of the Evolved.

The characters hail from the wealth of animal lore in Norse, Indian, and Borgesian mythology, from my own imagination, and from the science-fiction-esque facts found everywhere throughout biology textbooks and nature guides.

The lives of the beasts are revealed in a dialogue between the fountain-penned reminiscences of one character and the typed scientific data and diagrams of another.

Modeled on my great-grandmother’s annotated tintype album, this Bestiary explores our familial relationship with the rest of the natural world. It questions the rigid boundaries we’ve drawn between animal & human; between science & fiction; and between family & enemy.

Each book is approximately 6”x7”x3”, and is bound in cork skin. The body is constructed after a Victorian photo album, and contains c-print photographs set in die-cut paper, embellished with gold ink. The original text is silk-screened, handwritten, and typed. Some of the typed data is quoted from the zoology canon.

The sterling silver closure was made by metalsmith Heather Rubin for this project. Some books in the edition contain pressed flora and are covered with lichen, algae, and grass. Books are available with or without inserts, which include linoleum-block prints and silk-screened zoological diagrams aged in hazelnut coffee.

The Bestiary has homes in:
The Walker Art Center, Minneapolis; the Fales Library and Special Collections, NYU; the Mortimer Rare Book Room at the Neilson Library, Smith College; the Spencer Collection, New York Public Library, 42nd Street; LSU library Special Collections, Baton Rouge; and numerous private collections and libraries, on three continents.

There are four copies left for sale. For more information contact:
(212) 252-3782 or email beasts@sarapress.com

S a r a P r e s s P h o t o g r a p h y
http://www.sarapress.com
Voicemail 212-252-3782 Mobile 917-523-4848
New York City * Boston * California