Arts: Lingering Gaze
Local artist gathers her observations on Greenville in handmade book
WRITTEN BY: APRIL A. MORRIS
Walking down the street, cell phone to ear, you may not have noticed the striking curve of a branch over the sidewalk or a butterfly soaring over the Reedy River. Observing and absorbing the world today is sometimes superseded by our engagement with technology or other preoccupations. Greenville artist Karen Lucci felt this disconnect and recently resolved to pause daily, look around, and record her “noticings” in a journal. From this practice has grown The Fine Art of Noticing, a homemade publication featuring Lucci’s musings.
Bound in heavy paper, actually her own recycled art prints, the tall, slim volume—twelve pages to be exact—is a pleasure to hold and truly a tactile experience. Miles away from a Kindle or an iPad, this hand-bound and stitched, self-published book contains a distillation of Lucci’s daily noticings edited by three writer friends. Each photocopied page features an entry set in Greenville, ranging from people and nature to memories and poetry. Lucci says she felt drawn to put pen to paper after working on stories for a nonprofit newsletter and weekly prayer e-mails. “I’ve always been a writer without realizing,” she adds.
Because the covers are made from several different Lucci prints, the outer image varies and often depicts a local scene. “It’s more than a card, but it’s got a poetry feel about it,” she says. And the publication’s popularity has proven to be strong. Readers have been purchasing copies in the initial run of seventy-five as gifts, especially for the person who has everything, says Lucci. And this summer she is working on a second edition that is scheduled to be released in late August—something that should not escape notice.
The second volume of "The Fine Art of Noticing" is now available. If you liked the first, you will equally like/love the second which is focused on literary sketches of my walks down Main Street and into the parks of Greenville, SC. The cover painting is a fabulous picture of local folks on the Liberty Bridge. Both of these books are now available at Liz Daly Designs on Main St. in Greenville, SC of course!
