Leaf Love : Emerging : Disrupting

Letterpress Works on Paper by Deborah Barnett

An exhibition

April 17-25 at 183 Queen Street East

WOUNDS ARE NOT UGLY FLAWS, BUT EXQUISITE EVIDENCE OF OUR HUMAN EXPERIENCE

Someone Editions is thrilled to announce Leaf Love: Emerging : Disrupting, an exhibition by alternative book artist and creative director Deborah Barnett, co-curated at 183Gallery with gallerist Carol Mark.

Show dates: April 17,18,19,24 and 25 times as posted

Join us on Friday 17 April for the opening with Curated Tasting from Alice B. Toklas by Carol Mark

Aritist's talks on Saturday April 18, Sunday Aprl 19, Friday April 24 and Sunday April 25

In an era of backlit screens and digital everything, Barnett’s work serves as a tactile anchor. Her book objects are not just vessels for information, but containers of intent.Featuring letterpress printed excerpts from Gertrude Stein’s writings, each ‘leaf’—hand-printed, molded, shellacked, assembled and stitched—evokes and honours the traces and scars, evidence of wounds and repair, etched into experienced skin.

Reimagining the order and purpose of traditional book materials and forms, these prints and book objects are constructed using labour intensive methods – a deliberate choice to preserve the ‘human trace’– the minute, resonant imperfections that a machine cannot replicate.

Elevating the book to sculptural objects, Barnett invites the viewer to engage with the weight, texture, and permanence of thought in “books that cannot be closed.” Each piece is a material manifestation of time, asking the viewer to slow down and acknowledge the physical presence of the object, of a thought. Her limited editions are artifacts of a specific moment in time – a fusion of heritage craftsmanship and contemporary sculptural form. They deconstruct the traditional book and challenge us to read differently—as words become visible through a translucent page, spill off the edges, disappear  into the folds of deep gutters, and are stitched together with fibrous threads and patches. Sometimes presenting as cocoons of possibility, they also take the form of a house, its cover becoming a roof. The pages become the stitched skins of a torso, a quilt, a face, and abstract architectural forms.

In a world of the ephemeral, she creates book objects that ask for protection – like delicate bodies in experienced skin. Like knowledge.

Deborah Barnett is an artist and book-maker exploring the intersection of physical endurance and intellectual preservation. Specializing in 'book objects,' her works transform the traditional codex into a sculptural artifact, utilizing hand-printing and material research to create pieces that demand physical and emotional engagement.

With works ranging from $600 to $10,000, her practice is rooted in the philosophy of 'The Human Trace'—a commitment to the intimate variations only possible through manual production. Each limited edition is valued for its tactile complexity and its rejection of mass-produced, digital-first aesthetics. Barnett continues to push the boundaries of book arts, bridging the gap between functional craft and conceptual sculpture. In Leaf Love: Emerging : Disrupting, she presents the fragility of knowledge, held in books and our bodies, and asks that we try, in demanding times, to read differently—without assuming that knowledge is ‘as it has always been.’

Barnett’s practice pairs traditional letterpress with mulberry paper, dies, shellac and stitchery that emerges from her ethnographic roots in hand  printing and ancestral stitchery. While her training in letterpress was autodidactic, creating fine-print literary texts in limited-edition chapbooks, and volumes in complex, bespoke bindings, Barnett’s explorations capture her childhood – learning stitchery from her mother and grandmother. She transforms the codex into 3D sculptures, incorporating found objects to contextualize the works in our contemporary urban landscape, and demonstrate the ‘the futility of physical resistance in the face of the ephemeral digital age,’ in physical resistance to the ephemeral nature of the digital age.

Barnett builds layers of narrative that are then structurally integrated into the object through complex, exposed hand-stitching.

Carol Mark is a gallerist, artist, curator, and chef whose work bridges art, design, and cuisine. With formal training in French culinary arts at Ducasse, alongside expertise as a chocolatier and tea sommelier, she approaches art with a chef’s precision and an artist's curiosity. At 183 Gallery, Carol brings her passions together to create exhibitions and experiences that engage all the senses.