UPON A TIME. An Artist's Book. ART by PAUL GARDE`RE, a HAITIAN ARTIST; with accompanying Poems by Reagan Upshaw, an American Poet.

Published by Raphael Fodde, Brooklyn, New York, 2002.

SIGNED, LIMITED, FIRST EDITION. This is copy #6 of only 100 copies. SIGNED by both the ARTIST, Paul Gardere, and the POET, Reagan Upshaw, on the Colophon Page (the last page). Includes a laid-in card inscribed by Reagan Upshaw to a subscriber of the book.

A beautifully presented collaborative work between American poet, Reagan Upshaw and Haitian born artist, Paul Gardère. The book is a sequence of ten sonnets penned by Upshaw and visually interpreted by Gardère using original and collaged imagery and the artist's own calligraphy. Each of Paul Gardere's lithograph prints is printed on heavy stock paper and tipped-in. Each is quite striking in its colorful imagery.

Hardcover Book, green silk moiré covered boards stamped in black on the front cover, 15 leaves (30 pages), deckled edges, 11x13 inches oblong, in a plain card slipcase. Contains 10 tipped-in lithographs by Paul Gardere, with Poems by Reagan Upshaw on facing pages.

Condition: FINE book, sharp cornered, tight, bright, clean, clear and unmarked; in a GOOD slipcase that has some shelf rubs and a crease to the spine.

From the Paul Gardere website:

******?Upon a Time was created as a handmade art book, in a limited edition of 100. Each copy is signed and numbered by both artists.

Editions of Upon A Time reside in numerous, notable library collections, including the Museum of Modern Art Library, the Smithsonian American Art Museum Library, the Brooklyn Museum Library, and Yale and Cornell Universities Libraries.******

About PAUL GARDÈRE (from Wikipedia):

******Paul Claude Gardère, b.1944 d.2011, was a Haitian born Brooklyn based artist whose work explored "post colonial history, cultural hybridization, race, and identity, in and beyond the Haitian diaspora." Gardère's work has been widely exhibited throughout the United States, and is included in collections of The Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Studio Museum in Harlem, the Brooklyn Museum, the New Orleans Museum of Art, the Figge Art Museum, the Beinecke Library at Yale University, the Cornell University Museum of Art at Cornell University, and other prominent collections.

Gardère emigrated to New York City in 1959 where he studied at Cooper Union School of Art and Architecture. He developed a personal style that blended Haitian regionalist ideas, painting styles, and cultural symbols with "the larger aesthetics of Modern art". His work is heavily informed by religious and mythological symbolism, which he saw as a way of building a metaphysical bridge between cultures, drawing inspiration from the Old Masters and European Christianity as well as Haitian Regionalist Art and Vodou.******