Paris

 The following post was provided by artist Laura Davidson. Her brilliant books can be found in private collections throughout the United States and the world. This year she was invited to participate in the International Biennale for Artist’s Books and as a result her work, 9 cities one artist, will become part of the permanent collection of the Bibliotheca Alexandrina, Alexandria, Egypt.

Santa Croce

On my first trip abroad as a young artist, I fell in love with the idea of traveling from place to place, seeing the art and architecture that I had only experienced in slide form in art history classes and books.  I was dependent on travel guides, not having the Internet at that time to help me choose my destinations. Wandering through flea markets in Paris and Florence, I began to collect old travel guides.  By design, these Baedeker and Blue Guide books were not meant as collectables, but as something to put in your pocket and wander with. I found tattered books with notations, a hand written train schedule and hotel receipt from 1893, dried flowers and various other travel mementos.

Back home in the studio, I wanted to combine my love of travel with the passion I had developed for these books. This led to an ongoing project of creating tunnel books based on my favorite views. For the second and third books in the series, Florence and Paris, I drew directly on guidebook pages. The pages were then scanned, printed and die cut in editions of 500 copies, and each book was assembled by hand.

There are five in my series of tunnel books views so far. The first (sold out) was the view outside my window of Boston’s Big Dig project, called Tunnel Vision. Then I followed with Florence, Paris, Fenway Park, and the newest tunnel book in 2010 is Venice, with a view of Piazza San Marco.

The books can be purchased from me directly by phone or e-mail. Information can be found on my website

Venice