Isabel Hofmeyr: Renaissance woman
I know skilled writers avoid excessive hyperbole … but sometimes I find it difficult. So I am either not a skilled writer or in this case it’s deserved. Isabel Hofmeyr is a truly extra-ordinary woman. Her acute mind is evident seen in her various roles as researcher, teacher and academic. Check her Wikipedia entry as her achievements in this area are way too numerous tomention in this post. Academics publish books about innovative subject matter (or it should be innovative) but often the research is in closely related fields. And although the books below are all about transnational print culture and book history, the wide range of Isabel’s research is astonishing.
Not only does Isabel have extreme left-brained “smarts”, but she makes stunning visual images using innovative techniques which, needless to say she researches meticulously and then experiments, and executes with an admirable patience, focus and rigour. And as if this is not enough, she is generous, kind and a real mentsch to boot.
Gasp at Valley Rd Studio
In 2023 Isabel held an exhibition at a small intimate gallery, conceptualized and developed by another remarkable woman, Bridgit Grosskopf. Some wonderful exhibitions have been held at her studio gallery in Westcliff and one such was Isabel Hofmeyr’s Gasp.
The works on this exhibition were made with two processes: ecoprinting and by using books as paint brushes. This post talks abouth the bookbrush paintings.
Bookbrushes
Jack Ginsberg is an understated philanthropist and generous patron of the arts, who until he donated his collection of some 3500 artists’ books to Wits, owned the largest such private collection in the world. Artists’ book are books made BY artists. Prior to his donation to Wits, a tiny portion of his collection was shown in 2017 in a major exhibition entitled Booknesses at the the Univeristy of Johannesburg’s FADA gallery. Isabel Hofmeyr wrote about her process of using bookbrushes in the catalogue for Booknesses:
I am an academic with a book problem. I work on print culture and books and grapple with their meanings as social objects. As an academic, I have too many books and struggle to keep the rising tide of volumes at bay. … I decided one day to see if I could use the book as a type of paint brush. Long interested in the anatomy of the book, I was curious to see to what ends its materiality could be coaxed.
And Isabel writes in Booknesses:
Books are material objects. They have heft, odour and texture. They carry marginalia and bus tickets. Their materiality gives them afterlives – as trunk linings, door stops or cigarette papers. The technique used here adds another afterlife by turning the book into a printing implement. The books are saturated and then shaped into spidery forms.
Pelagic Book 1 2016 Monotype Isabel writes: The technique produces pelagic, marine-like images, a far cry from the solidity that we associate with books – yet another metamorphosis of the book and its surprising materialities.
And as if the innovative bookbrush paintings aren’t enough, there are several beautiful eco-printed works. But more about those in another blog post.
Marigold Beads Pop-up at 54 Valley Rd 30 Nov
There is a Pop-up of Marigold Beads at 54 Valley Road which will, as always, be drool-worthy. Even if you go just to look at the selection and how exquisite they look en-masse – as much as necklaces which are all unique, can ever look en-masse.
