RECORD, by George Keenen
$15.00
RECORD was first hand-printed with rubber stamps by George Keenen in San Francisco in 1976, then lost until 2018. (The photo shows it in its original form.) It soon fell into the hands of Sophia Kidd, publisher of Igneus Press, who deemed it worthy of publication.
Keenen was in the van of rubber stamp artists in the ’70s. He published the first of several stamp catalogs in 1974. Joni K. Miller & Lowry Thompson, in their comprehensive book about rubber stamps, The Rubber Stamp Album (Workman Publishing, N.Y., 1978), say that these early catalogs are “treasured by those who have hung onto them.”
Actually, Keenen made four books, but only one has resurfaced. RECORD was 76 pages long and took two nights to write, with time off for coffee at Terminal Lunch in downtown San Francisco. In this book, lines of type separated by a double space represent the pages of the original.
Keenen is a former Poetry Editor of ART/LIFE Limited Edition Monthly, published by the late Joe Cardella, out of Ventura, CA, USA. Keenen lives on an island off the coast of Oakland, CA.
January 2021
