Hidden In Plain Sight: Book Description

Hidden in Plain Sight, a limited edition artist book, is part biography and part homage to family lost in the Holocaust. The catalyst for the original suite of prints by artist, Bunny Burson, is a bundle of letters from grandparents trapped in Nazi Germany and later Latvia, to her mother in Memphis, Tennessee, discovered only recently in the attic of her childhood home. The handwritten script and typed text of these letters came to represent grandparents she never knew and became the source of visual inspiration for the work. The book addresses the trauma of loss, the imprecision of memory, and the universal desire to discover who we are through those who came before us. It is given added poignancy through their handwriting, intimate and revealing communication, which conveys even more than the words themselves.

Madeleine Albright, former Secretary of State, recalling her own experience, has written the foreword, and Karen K. Butler, former curator at the Kemper Museum in St. Louis, has contributed an essay. Burson’s postscript completes the accompanying texts.

Completed in 2015, Hidden in Plain Sight is in an edition of 27 with unique prints on diverse papers, including lithographic foldouts, blind embossed woodblock prints, cut stencil pressure prints and letterpress printing.

The book was designed by Ken Botnick of emdash studio in Saint Louis, Missouri, bound in a non-adhesive, sewn structure and placed in a silk-covered clamshell box by Daniel Kelm of Wide Awake Garage in Easthampton, Massachusetts. Antique brass envelopes were inlaid into front and back covers, fabricated from the actual envelopes the artist’s mother received in Memphis.

The book measures 13 x 8.5 x 1 inches. Each book is signed and numbered by the artist.

Bunny Burson