Buzz Spector: New Work

BU Z Z S P EC TO R NEW WORK

bruno david gallery

BUZZ SPECTOR New Work

September 5 - October 11, 2014 Bruno David Gallery 3721 Washington Boulevard Saint Louis, Missouri 63108, U.S.A. info@brunodavidgallery.com www.brunodavidgallery.com Director: Bruno L. David

Bruno David Projects 1245 South Vandeventer Avenue Saint Louis, Missouri 63110, U.S.A. info@brunodavidprojects.com www.brunodavidprojects.com Director: Keri Robertson

This catalogue was published in conjunction with the exhibition “Buzz Spector: New Work” at Bruno David Gallery. It includes documentation of Spector’s 2012 gallery installation, “Malevich: with eight red rectangles.”

Editor: Bruno L. David Catalogue Designer: Michelle Jones Designer Assistant: Claudia R. David Printed in USA All works courtesy of Buzz Spector and Bruno David Gallery Photographs by Bruno David Gallery Cover image: About the Author 2, 2014 (detail) Photo and text on museum board on aluminium 14 x 47-1/2 x 5 inches (56.5 x 91.8 cm) Edition of 3 First Edition Copyright © 2014 Bruno David Gallery and Bruno David Projects All Rights Reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form without the written permission of Bruno David Gallery and Bruno David Projects

CONTENTS

DEAR BUZZ:

BY MARSHALL KLIMASEWISKI POSITIONING THE AUTHOR

BY BUZZ SPECTOR Afterword

BY BRUNO L. DAVID CHECKLIST AND IMAGES OF THE EXHIBITION: NEW WORK INSTALLATION: MALEVICH: WITH EIGHT RED RECTANGLES BIOGRAPHY

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Outlook email From: Klimasewiski, Marshall Sent: Friday, October 3, 2014 11:36 AM To: Spector, Buzz Subject: Re: Buzz Spector exhibit

Dear Buzz: It’s somehow been a full week since I went and saw the show at Bruno David—one of those mid-semester reckless weeks in which I seem to have raced to get whole heaps of who-knows and who-cares done—and I’ve kept meaning to write to you about how much I enjoyed the show but, in a way, the delay has been helpful because those images have gotten to marinate in my brain that much longer. And honestly, I feel like this show was custom built to fit my brain. Walking through it, I started to worry that you might be a character of mine. Of course, I’m not actually capable of writing that character, and the influence is always working in the other direction—it felt like a show that so nicely enlarged and refurnished the living room of my imagination. But I do admire this work in part for how it ends up finding new and exciting, compelling subversive, actually inspiring ways to explore some of what happen to be my own obsessions as well.

I’m too many years into a novel that is partly built out of other novels—out of the library of literary spaces and characters in my writing brain—and those collages of yours (Writers Bloc and Writers—Hats and Scarves, and especially Authors (Features #1) and Author Libraries #9 [possibly my favorite piece]) that involve the building of feasible composite faces alongside the disjunction of other elements, and then the blending of books and authors as well (but not, I imagined, of their own books—rather, of the books they’d read, that had produced them?), were making me think about my own work and my ideas about the intermingling of book experience and life experience in new ways. As with everything in the show, I found those collages beautiful composite images, but they also had, to me, a sort of Borges-like suggestion of layers into layers, and of something infinitely reproducing.

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I saw that, too, in Open Book 2, that book-within-the-book collage with “How To Look Through a Keyhole” in the top left corner clipping. And I found the “About the Author” series beautiful and funny—so appealingly, elegantly subversive—but slightly terrifying, too: to see the sad language of flap copy and blurbs repurposed that way, both elevated, in a sense (it becomes so liturgical in the video), and exposed. I do love the “praise for…” sequences, but I also think it’s an inspired choice to work with the last words of the copy—with those landings it almost always works toward with particular laudatory ambition. Those pieces make that dust jacket copy itself feel oddly isolated, not only from the book it describes but sort of from the family of prose, in a way that I’d never thought about before, and it felt right to extend or call-out that isolation in the use of those first and last lines of text. I also really like Frieze, and wished, in a geeky way, that I had you there to ask who each author is. (I recognized some, of course, but fewer than I should have.) And Efface Nabokov—The Original of Laura is just a beautiful, weirdly suggestive object. I love what you saw was feasible with those note cards, and I want to think that Nabokov would love it, too.

Thanks again for letting me know about the show, Buzz. I was so glad to see it. Congratulations! I hope it’s been getting the attention it deserves.

Take care, Marshall

(Copy of an e-mail sent to Buzz Spector by Marshall Klimasewiski on Friday, October 3, 2014.)

Marshall N. Klimasewiski is the author of two books, both published by W. W. Norton:The Cottagers (2006), a novel, and Tyrants (2008), a story collection. His stories have appeared in The New Yorker, The Atlantic Monthly, Ploughshares, Tin House, TriQuarterly, Subtropics, The Yale Review, The Missouri Review, and The Antioch Review, and have been included in Best American Short Stories and The Best of Tin House: Stories. He has received fellowships from the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts. This text is one in a series of the gallery’s exhibitions written by fellow gallery artists and friends.

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Positioning the Author Buzz Spector

A writer pauses before a personal computer, searching for another sentence, the next sentence, of a text. How do we see this body in that state? Are the fingers of both hands poised above the keyboard? Or does this writer need arms at rest to conjure up the articulation of another thought. The screen shows some words in white against radiant blue. This is a timely image. Mallarmé once lamented that “one does not write luminously on a dark field,” but now, indeed, one may summon “the alphabet of stars.”

What happens to the face while one is writing? “Knitted brow” is a common enough cliché, as is “clenched jaw” or “glazed eyes.”

Finding the right words—the next words—isn’t much a matter of the flesh. The physiognomic slackness resulting from a preoccupied mind is merely a nobler sort of stupor. But while the absorption of the writer follows naturally from the processes of thought and its transcription, authorship follows after these facts, being a role attached to publication not writing. The authorial look, then, is a pose of concentration, the performance of a composure appropriate to the bureaucratic circumstances of texts and readers. As such it is a tempered expression, tuned, like a piano, in acceptable proximity to the widest range of emotional and intellectual keys.

Books are formal presentations of text. They have titles, after all, and come jacketed, with paragraphs of introduction slipped between their covers and their pages. The author’s jacket photograph is also a formal presentation. It proposes a corporeal form from which has issued the text body the image sheathes. How then, to attach that visage, those brute features, to the disembodied grace of these words? The author, posed as author—not parent, spouse, hobbyist, or other role—in such images acts out the behaviors of writing. Authors, however, are often bad actors, giving the author photograph an artificiality quite different from that of the film still.

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The conceptual spaciousness of the filmic image is a function of its codes of characterization and identification. Recognizing a photograph as having come from a film establishes it as a slice of cinematic time, and brings to the viewer’s mind a reverie of engagement, of projection of the self into the multitudinous realms of fantasy. But the “still”-ness of such photographs allows us the time to scrutinize expressions, costumes, and sets. Outside the narrative flow of the film, the artifices of performance and staging are much more visible. Still, we understand that the people in the photograph are actors playing parts. Since they haven’t thought up the script their inconsistencies of pose don’t reveal them to be faking.

The author photograph offers us very little projective space since it identifies the bodily source of the text but not the powers of mind that have enacted it. Roland Barthes remarks of feeling “a sense of inauthenticity, sometimes of imposture,” when being photographed, and this surely is an aspect of being seen—seeing himself then—as the author Roland Barthes. Reading Barthes, we may find ourselves seduced and amazed by a sentence or passage or entire body of text. Closing the book we stare in something like disbelief at the image of the person whose words have excited us so. Is this not part of what Barthes meant by the “death” of the author?

(Originally published in Spector’s artists’ book, The Position of the Author, Visual Studies Workshop Press, Rochester, NY, 1992.)

Buzz Spector is an artist, critic, and professor of art in the Sam Fox School of Design and Visual Arts at Washington University in St. Louis. This text is one in a series of the gallery’s exhibitions written by fellow gallery artists and friends.

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Afterword

BY BRUNO L. DAVID

I am pleased to present a new exhibition titled “New Work” by Buzz Spector. This show marks Spector’s second solo exhibition with the gallery.

Buzz Spector’s excavations of books and reconstructions of libraries are well-known, but his work with found and altered volumes has always been accompanied by works on paper made from elements of their dust jackets. As Spector writes, “books are formal presentations of text. They have titles, after all, and come jacketed, with paragraphs of introduction slipped between their covers and their pages.” This new work features collages made from dust jacket elements in the front gallery and larger collages and wallmounted sculptures incorporating details of author photos in the main gallery. Also on view in the main gallery is Frieze, a reinstallation of the 60-foot long arrangement of author photos Spector showed at the Huntington Museum of Art, Huntington, West Virginia in October 2013. Spector’s ongoing meditation on reading and the culture of the book extends here to reflections on how—and when—writers become authors, how work of the imagination is performed via posing, and how the specialized, but also highly conventional, language of dust jacket blurbs can itself be excavated in search of new narrative meanings.

This catalogue includes documentation of Malevich: with eight red rectangles, Spector’s 2012 installation in the front gallery, of books objects plus a wall element, that comprises a room-size homage to the historically significant early abstract painting, Suprematism: with eight red rectangles, 1915, by the Russian artist Kasimir Malevich. Evoking the restangles of the original painting, now in the collection of the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdan, eight uniquelely shaped large books, bound in vibrant red, can be seen on the gallery floor. They appear to fit the apertures in a nearby freestanding white-painted wall. Gold foil embrossing on the spines of seven of these volumes give the name of the painter, the title of his work, and information about its materials and institutional ownership.

The eight book is titled, “Buzz Spector, 1991.” Malevich with eight red rectangles was made in an edition of three. One is in the collection of the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago and the second is in the Luigi Pecci Centre, Prato, Italy.

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Buzz Spector is an artist, critic, and professor of art in the Sam Fox School of Design and Visual Arts at Washington University in St. Louis. Spector is the author of numerous essays on art and artists. Buzzwords, a book of interviews with Spector, plus page art, was published in 2012 by Sara Ranchouse Publishing, Chicago. Spector received his M.F.A. from the University of Chicago in 1978, combining studies in art and philosophy, and studied design and art at Southern Illinois University at Carbondale, where he received his B.A. in 1972. Spector has exhibited his art in such museums as the Art Institute of Chicago, Huntington Museum of Art, Huntington, WV, Mattress Factory Art Museum, Pittsburgh, PA, Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, and the Luigi Pecci Centre, Prato, Italy.

Spector was a co-founder of WhiteWalls, a magazine of writings by artists, in Chicago in 1978, and served as the publication’s editor until 1987. Since then he has written extensively on topics in contemporary art and culture, and has contributed reviews and essays to a number of publications, including American Craft, Artforum, Art Issues, Art on Paper, Exposure, and New Art Examiner. He is the author of The Book Maker’s Desire, critical essays on topics in contemporary art and artists’ books (Umbrella Editions, 1995), and numerous exhibition catalogue essays including, most recently, N. Dash (White Flag Projects, 2013) and Luis Camnitzer: Forewords and Last Words (Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum, 2011).

Spector received the Distinguished Teaching of Art Award from the College Art Association in 2013. Other recognition includes a 2005 New York Foundation for the Arts (NYFA) Fellowship, a Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation Fellowship in 1991, and National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship Awards in 1982, 1985, and 1991.

Support for the creation of significant new works of art has been the core to the mission and program of the Bruno David Gallery since its founding in 2005. I would like to express my sincere thanks to Marshall Klimasewiski and Buzz Spector for their thoughtful texts. I am deeply grateful to Michelle Jones, who gave much time, talent, and expertise to the production of this catalogue. Invaluable gallery staff support for the exhibition was provided by Cleo Azariadis, Yoko Kiyoi, Keri Robertson, Wen Xi Lee, Ailing Zhang and Abigail Spratt.

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Photo courtesy of Washington University in St. Louis and Mark Katzman

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CHECKLIST & IMAGES OF THE EXHIBITION

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About the Author 2, 2014 Photo and text on museum board on aluminium Edition of 3 14 x 47-1/2 x 5 inches (35.56 x 120.65 x 12.7 cm)

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About the Author 3, 2014 Photo and text on museum board on aluminium Edition of 3 14 x 47-1/2 x 5 inches (35.56 x 120.65 x 12.7 cm)

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About the Author 1, 2014 Photo and text on museum board on aluminium Edition of 3 14 x 47-1/2 x 5 inches (35.56 x 120.65 x 12.7 cm)

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Buzz Spector: New Work (installation view)

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Stentor, 2014 Collaged dust jacket elements on museum board 34 x 17 inches (Framed) (86.4 x 43.2 cm)

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Echo, 2014 Collaged dust jacket elements on museum board 34 x 17 inches (Framed) (86.4 x 43.2 cm)

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Authors (Features #1), 1998 Collaged book jacket cover and photos on paper 13 - 1/4 x 37 - 1/4 inches (Framed) (33.6 x 94.6 cm)

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Authors Thinking #3, 1999 Collage on museum board 13 - 1/4 x 37 - 1/4 inches (Framed) (33.6 x 94.6 cm)

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Authors Libraries 9, 2014 Collaged dust jacket elements on museum board 13 - 3/4 x 46 - 1/4 inches (Framed) (34.9 x 117.5 cm)

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Buzz Spector Effaced Nabokov, 2014 Altered book Altered copy of Dimitri Nabokov, ed. The Original of Laura by Vladimir Nabokov, New York: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, 2009.

Designed by Chip Kidd.

The pages of the text block are individually torn in systematically decreasing increments from the front to the back. No mediums of any kind are applied to the torn pages and no implement was employed as a template to guide the tearing.

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Effaced Nabokov, 2014 Altered Book Edition of 5 1 -3/4 x 12 - 1/2 x 9 -1/2 inches (4.4 x 31.75 x 24.1 cm)

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Frieze, 2013 Installation of 163 found dust jacket photos of authors Dimensions variable

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Frieze, 2013 (details)

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Frieze, 2013 (details)

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principles have been derived. about our country and our world. potential failure. the agony. undercurrents. just might get him killed . . . desolate reaches. and unforgettable characters. to make it through another day. everything he has come to love . . . to a wildly powerful climax. and a meditation on storytelling itself. for all time.

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Art Of Life, 2013 Collaged dust jacket elements on handmade paper 12 - 1/4 x 12 - 1/4 inches (Framed) (31.11 x 31.11 cm)

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in the world every day. hope could triumph. and redemption, with a chaser of humor mixed in. now, pulpit command. men of the mind of God. and women. on behalf of us all. thrilling ways. drama, and terror of these events. immense passion and pain. we need to see more clearly. that everything else is—or may be—a lie. scenes on the silver screen. beyond. the world that we know.

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In the World Every Day, 2014 Collaged dust jacket elements on handmade paper 12 - 1/4 x 12 - 1/4 inches (Framed) (31.11 x 31.11 cm)

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Author’s Introduction. and complex. thinking is actually carried on.

With over 100 illustrations of art. articulated. in progress. a celebration in the dark. unexpectedly pleasurable. and thrilling unknown.

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Auhor’s Introduction, 2014 Collaged dust jacket elements on handmade paper 12 - 1/4 x 12 - 1/4 inches (Framed) (31.11 x 31.11 cm)

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Praise for the calligrapher, Praise for behind the lines.

Praise for the crooked letter, Praise for bound in twine.

Praise for finding our tongues, Praise for the corrections.

Praise for the book of lost books, Acclaim for scripted for change.

Praise for the uses of paradox From the horizontal world.

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Praise for the Calligrapher, 2014 Collaged dust jacket elements on handmade paper 12 - 1/4 x 12 - 1/4 inches (Framed) (31.11 x 31.11 cm)

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Praise for the birth of Venus, Praise for a rift in the clouds.

Praise for far side of the Earth, Praise for what I did wrong.

Praise for mobile modernity, Praise for in the woods.

Praise for a view from the foothills, Praise for the theory of clouds.

Praise for the stars, like dust; Praise for the inhabited world.

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Praise for the Birth of Venus, 2014 Collaged dust jacket elements on handmade paper 12 - 1/4 x 12 - 1/4 inches (Framed) (31.11 x 31.11 cm)

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powers of art. and the values that they imply. terms. both to action and thought. its greatness . . . and all its ignominy. emerge. from mistakes. desire is always still a commodity. it appears.

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Powers of Art, 2014 Collaged dust jacket elements on handmade paper 12 - 1/4 x 12 - 1/4 inches (Framed) (31.11 x 31.11 cm)

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we think of ourselves as having high moral standards. just to name a few. of the many differences between men and women. what they desire, in surprising—and dangerous—ways. and love in all its forms. we’re going. straight. to improving. limitations of performativity. “good” and “bad” sex. occurred—or, perhaps, did not occur. between the principal characters.

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We Think of Outselves as Having High Moral Standards, 2014 Collaged dust jacket elements on handmade paper 12 - 1/4 x 12 - 1/4 inches (Framed) (31.11 x 31.11 cm)

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in modern America. nothing is as it seems. behind the most glamorous facades. behind their own homes. hypocrisies, and desires. we need a new understanding of myth. right now. for blockbuster entertainment. no time to waste.

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In Modern America, 2014 Collaged dust jacket elements on handmade paper 12 - 1/4 x 12 - 1/4 inches (Framed) (31.11 x 31.11 cm)

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Writers as Others 4, 2014 Collaged dust jacket elements on handmade paper 12 - 1/4 x 12 - 1/4 inches (Framed) (31.11 x 31.11 cm)

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Open Book 2, 2014 Collaged dust jacket elements on handmade paper 12 - 1/4 x 12 - 1/4 inches (Framed) (31.11 x 31.11 cm)

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About the Author 4, 2014 Collaged dust jacket elements on handmade paper 12 - 1/4 x 12 - 1/4 inches (Framed) (31.11 x 31.11 cm)

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Writers Bloc 1, 2014 Collaged dust jacket elements on handmade paper 12 - 1/4 x 12 - 1/4 inches (Framed) (31.11 x 31.11 cm)

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Writers: Hats and Scarves, 2014 Collaged dust jacket elements on handmade paper 12 - 1/4 x 12 - 1/4 inches (Framed) (31.11 x 31.11 cm)

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About the Author 3, 2014 Collaged dust jacket elements on handmade paper 12 - 1/4 x 12 - 1/4 inches (Framed) (31.11 x 31.11 cm)

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Writers Bloc 2 (blue), 2014 Collaged dust jacket elements on handmade paper 12 - 1/4 x 12 - 1/4 inches (Framed) (31.11 x 31.11 cm)

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Colloquium 4, 2006 Collaged book pages on paper 12 - 1/4 x 12 - 1/4 inches (Framed) (31.11 x 31.11 cm)

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Buzz Spector: New Work (installation view)

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Buzz Spector: New Work (installation view)

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Buzz Spector: New Work (installation view)

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Buzz Spector: New Work (installation view)

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Buzz Spector: New Work (installation view)

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Buzz Spector: New Work (installation view)

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Buzz Spector: New Work (installation view)

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Selected Poems, (still) 2014 Single-channel color video with sound Directed and filmed by Kellie Spano 4:45 minute (looped) Edition of 20 + 2 A.P.

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Malevich: with eight red rectangles Bruno David Gallery (2012)

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Malevich: with 8 red rectangles, 1992-2012 Books with wall element Size variable Unique

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Suprematism (with eight red rectangles), 1992 5 colors debossed print 22-1/2 x 19 inches (sheet size) (57.15 x 48.26 cm) Edition of 20

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Malevich: with 8 red rectangles, 1992-2012 (detail)

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Buzz Spector Lives and works in St. Louis, Missouri.

EDUCATION 1978 1972

University of Chicago, M.F.A., Committee on Art and Design Southern Illinois University at Carbondale, B.A., Art

SELECTED ONE PERSON EXHIBITIONS 2014 “Buzz Spector: New Work,” Bruno David Gallery, St. Louis, MO (catalogue)

“Buzz Spector: About the Author, new collages,” Marsha Mateyka Gallery, Washington, DC

“Otherwise: Mary Jo Bang & Buzz Spector,” Beverly Gallery, St. Louis, MO 2013 “Walter Gropius Master Artist Series: Buzz Spector,” Huntington Museum of Art, Huntington, WV

“Papers,” (with Joan Hall) Bruno David Gallery, St. Louis, MO 2012 “Buzz Spector: Off the Shelf,” book installations, Grunwald Gallery, Indiana University, Bloomington, IN (catalogue)

“Malevich: with 8 red Rectangles,” installation, Bruno david Gallery, St. Louis, MO 2011 “Buzz Spector: Manual Style,” Zolla-Lieberman Gallery, Chicago, MO

“it is not a pipe,” Isolation Room/Gallery Kit, St. Louis, MO 2010 “Shelf Life: selected work,” Bruno David Gallery, St. Louis, MO (catalogue) 2009 “Buzz Spector: Cards and Letters: Postcard works 1973-2000,” Gahlberg Gallery,

College of DuPage, Glen Ellyn, IL (catalogue)

Libreria al ferro di cavallo, Rome, Italy 2008 Urban Institute for Contemporary Art, Grand Rapids, MI

Zolla-Lieberman Gallery, Chicago, IL 2005 “Panorama (Forest of Signs),” installation, one of five public art projects, Contemporary & Classic Art Fair,

Navy Pier, Chicago, IL (installation)

Zolla-Lieberman Gallery, Chicago, IL 2004 Marsha Mateyka Gallery, Washington, DC 2003 Zolla-Lieberman Gallery, Chicago, IL

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SELECTED ONE PERSON EXHIBITIONS (continued) 2001 Cristinerose | Josée Bienvenu Gallery, New York

“Public/Private Peace,” installation, List Art Gallery, Swarthmore College, PA (catalogue) 2000 Marsha Mateyka Gallery, Washington, DC 1999 Zolla-Lieberman Gallery, Chicago, IL 1998 “Beautiful Scenes: Selections from the Cranbrook Archives by Buzz Spector,” installation, Cranbrook Art Museum,

Bloomfield Hills, MI (catalogue)

Cristinerose Gallery, New York (catalogue)

Marsha Mateyka Gallery, Washington, DC 1997 Kerlin Gallery, Dublin, Ireland 1996 Zolla-Lieberman Gallery, Chicago, IL

Marsha Mateyka Gallery, Washington, DC 1995 Angles Gallery, Santa Monica, CA

Roy Boyd Gallery, Chicago 1994 “Unpacking my Library,” inSITE’94, San Diego State University Art Gallery, CA, traveled to Cleveland

Center for Contemporary Art, Cleveland, OH (catalogue) 1992 fiction/nonfiction, New York

Laurence Miller Gallery, New York

“Bibliography,” Fisher Gallery, installation, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA (catalogue)

Roy Boyd Gallery, Santa Monica, CA 1991 “Cold Fashioned Room,” installation, Mattress Factory, Pittsburgh, PA (catalogue) 1990 “Buzz Spector: New California Artist XVII,” Newport Harbor Art Museum (now Orange County

Museum of Art), Newport Beach, CA (catalogue)

“Transgressions: Donald Lipski and Buzz Spector,” Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, DC (catalogue) 1988 “The Library of Babel,” installation, The Art Institute of Chicago, IL (catalogue)

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SELECTED GROUP EXHIBITIONS 2014 “OVERVIEW_2014,” Bruno David Gallery, St. Louis, MO

“Odd Volumes: Book Art from the Allan Chasanoff Collection,” Yale University Art Gallery (catalogue)

“Rebound: turning books into art,” Birmingham Bloomfield Art Center, Birmingham, MI

“Bound by Silence,” Center for Book Arts, New York, NY 2013 “A Human Document: selections from the Sackner Archive of Concrete and Visual Poetry,” Pérez Art Museum,

Miami, FL (catalogue)

“Brave New World: the art of the book in the digital age,” Cedarhurst Center for the Arts, Mount Vernon, IL

“MCA DNA: Chicago conceptual abstraction, 1986-1995,” Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, IL 2012 “Beaten & Bound,” Lubeznik Center For The arts, Michigan City, MI

“TRADITION! (as uttered by Zero Mostel in the ‘Fiddler on the Roof’,” RAC Gallery, St. Louis, MO

“BLUE-WHITE-RED,” Bruno David Gallery, St. Louis, MO

“WhiteWalls: 1978-2008,” Golden Gallery, New York 2011 “Write Now: Artists and Letterforms,” Chicago Cultural Center

“W.O.P. I,” Bruno David Gallery, St. Louis, MO 2010 “Something Geographical: Vernon Fisher, Xiaoze Xie, Buzz Spector,” Zolla-Lieberman Gallery, Chicago

(Traveled to South Bend Museum of Art, South Bend, IN)

“Overpaper,” Bruno David gallery, St. Louis, MO (catalogue)

“The Book: A Contemporary View,” Delaware Center for the Contemporary Arts, Wilmington, DE (catalogue) 2009 “Text/Messages: books by artists,” Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, MN 2008 “ARAC@AAM,” Aspen Art Museum, Aspen, CO (catalogue) 2007 “. . . one more thing added to the world: the Borges Effect in contemporary artists’ books,” Old Capitol Museum, Iowa City, IA 2006 “Why Lee Shot C: Buzz, she left’em Vernon!” Zolla-Lieberman Gallery, Chicago, IL 2005 “Library,” Contemporary Art Galleries, University of Connecticut, Storrs, CT 2002 “Life Death Love Hate Pleasure Pain,” Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, IL (catalogue) 1998 “Testo e Contesto: il libro-ambiente (Text and Context: the book as attitude),” Accademia d’Ungheria,

Palazzo Falconieri, Rome, Italy (installation with catalogue)

“Chicago Hip,” Rocket Gallery, London, UK 1996 “Art in Chicago: 1945-1995,” Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, IL (catalogue) 1992 “Knowledge: Aspects of Conceptual Art,” University Art Museum, University of California-Santa Barbara, CA

(traveling exhibit with catalogue) 1991 “Library of Babel: books to infinity,” curated by Todd Alden, Hallwalls Contemporary Art Center, Buffalo, NY (catalogue) 1990 Knowledge: Aspects of Conceptual Art,” University Art Museum, University of California-Santa Barbara, CA

(traveling exhibit with catalogue)

“All Quiet on the Western Front?” Espace Dieu, Paris, France

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SELECTED PUBLICATIONS BY THE ARTIST 2014 “Positioning the Author,” essay in Buzz Spector: New Work (exh. cat.), Bruno David Publications, St. Louis, MO

“Storms,” (exh. cat.), interview with Carmon Colangelo,” Bruno David Publications, St. Louis, MO

“Notes on ‘An experiment in synthesizing word-related interests of artists and poets,’ “ essay in Satinsky, Abigail, ed. Support Networks,

Chicago: School of the Art Institute of Chicago and University of Chicago Press 2013 “Museums at the Scale of One Body,” essay in Thomas C. Card: Tokyo Adorned, New York: Abrams Books, Booth-Clibborn Editions

Untitled essay in N. Dash (exhibition catalogue), White Flag Projects, St. Louis, MO 2012 “BUZZWORDS: interviews with Buzz Spector,” Chicago: Sara Ranchouse Publishing 2011 “Xu Bing: Words of Art,” essay in Hochtritt, Lisa, Ploof, John, and Quinn, Therese, eds. Culture as Commons: Art and social justice

education,” Chicago: School of the Art Institute of Chicago and Routledge/Taylor

“Forewords and last Words: An Interview,” in Luis Camnitzer: Forewords and last words (exhibition catalogue),

Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum, Washington University in St. Louis 2010 “I Stack Things. I Tear Stuff Up,” essay in Shelf Life: Selected Work (exh. cat.), Bruno David Publications, St. Louis, MO

“Buzz Spector,” essay in Jacob, Mary Jane, and Grabner, Michelle, eds. The Studio Reader, Chicago: School of the Art Institute

of Chicago and University of Chicago Press 2008 “Shard Experience,” essay in New Glass Review 29, Corning Museum of Glass, Corning, NY 2006 “Moremoremore and more so,” essay in Sang-ah Choi: moremoremore (exh. cat.), University Galleries, Illinois State University,

Bloomington-Normal, IL 2003 Between the Sheets, artists’ book, The Ink Shop/Olive Branch Press and Buzz Spector, Ithaca, NY 2002 “Conrad Bakker’s Vernacular Simulation,” essay in Untitled: Mail Order Catalogue, Conrad Bakker and

Creative Capital, Inc., New York 2001 Details: closed to open, artists’ book, Swarthmore College and Buzz Spector

“Installing at the Mattress Factory: a reminiscence,” essay in Giannini, Claudia, Ed., Mattress Factory 1990-1999,

Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2001 1998 Beautiful Scenes: selections from the Cranbrook Archives, artist-designed exhibition catalogue published by Cranbrook Art Museum,

Bloomfield Hills, MI 1995 The Book Maker’s Desire: writings on the art of the book, Santa Monica, CA: Umbrella Editions 1994 A Passage, artists’ book, New York: Granary Books 1992 “In Flux,” artist’s statement for Connections: Explorations in the Getty Center Collections by Raymond Pettibon, Ed Ruscha,

Alexis Smith, and Buzz Spector, (exh. cat.) Santa Monica, CA: Getty Research Center 1990 “Ann Hamilton’s Situations of Desire,” essay in Ann Hamilton: Sao Paulo – Seattle, (exh. cat.) Seattle, WA:

Henry Art Gallery, University of Washington

“In Flux,” artist’s statement for Connections:Explorations in the Getty Center Collections by Raymond Pettibon, Ed Ruscha,

Alexis Smith, and Buzz Spector, (exh. cat.), Santa Monica, CA: Getty Research Center

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CURATORIAL OR EDITORIAL PROJECTS 2013-present Art Editor, december magazine, St. Louis, MO 2012 “TRADITION! (as uttered by Zero Mostel in Fiddler on the Roof),” Regional Arts Commission Gallery, St. Louis, MO. 2011 “Luis Camnitzer: Forewords and last Words,” Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum, Washington University in St. Louis 2007 “…one more thing added to the World: the Borges Effect in contemporary artists’ books,” Old Capitol Museum,

University of Iowa, IA 2005 “Pages,” I Space, Chicago 2003 “Pages,” Cristinerose | Josée Bienvenu Gallery, New York 2001 “Apocalypse Next Week: Scott Anderson, Brent Coles, Eric Huebsch, and Hannah Israel,”

(co-curator with Linda Robbenolt) I space, Chicago, IL 1999 “The Plethora Effect: Todd Allison, Jill Daves, Anne Howard, Kevin Kaempf, and Andrew Shirk,” I space, Chicago, IL

“MAXX’99,” Memphis-area biennial exhibition, University of Memphis Museum of Art 1992 “Fluid Measure,” group exhibition sponsored by Nomadic Site Project, Hollywood Branch, Los Angeles Public Library, CA

“In Flux,” in Connections: Explorations in the Getty Center Collections by Raymond Pettibon, Ed Ruscha, Alexis Smith,

and Buzz Spector, Getty Research Institute, Santa Monica, CA 1989-90 Section Editor, “Artists’ Writings,” Art Journal, College Art Association, New York 1981 “Words as Images,” (co-curator with Reagan Upshaw) The Renaissance Society, University of Chicago, IL 1980 “Objects and Logotypes: relationships between minimalist art and corporate design,” The Renaissance Society,

University of Chicago, IL 1978-87 Editor, WhiteWalls: a magazine of writings by artists, Chicago

AWARDS & FELLOWSHIPS 2013 Distinguished Teaching of Art Award, College Art Association 2005 Artist’s Fellowship, New York Foundation for the Arts 2004 Von Hess Visiting Artist, University of the Arts, Philadelphia, PA 1991 Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation Award

Fellowship Award, National Endowment for the Arts 1988 Visual Artist’s Fellowship, Illinois Arts Council 1985 Fellowship Award, National Endowment for the Arts 1982 Fellowship Award, National Endowment for the Arts

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SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY SINCE 2001

2014 Klimasewiski, Marshall N. “Dear Buzz,” in Buzz Spector: New Work (exh. cat.)

Bruno David Gallery Publications (catalogue).

Weinman, Sarah. “Artist’s ‘New Work’ draws from books and jackets.” Jewish Light, August 27 (illus.).

Kitnick, Alex. “Brand Minimalism,” interview with Buzz Spector, Art in America, April 2014 (illus.).

Murphy, Patrick. “Art Fusion: Franklin “Buzz” Spector,” A TV interview, PBS/Arts America, July

Minsky, Richard. “Tear, Plaster, & Stack,” Fine Books & Collections, Book Art, Spring (illus.).

Hermes Griesbach, Sarah. “Reflection: Words and Art Combine at Fort Gondo, Beverly with Provocative Result,”

STL Public Radio, January 10, (illus.).

2012 Salamony, Sandra, with Thomas, Peter and Donna. 1000 Artists’ Books, Minneapolis, MN: Quarry Books, 40 (illus.).

Abrams, Abby. “Artists explore Jewish identity through TRADITION!,” STL Beacon, August 6, (illus.).

2011 Yood, James. “Buzz Spector: ‘Manual Style’” at Zolla/Lieberman Gallery,” Art Ltd. (November-December 2011): 31 (illus.).

Stewart, Garrett. Bookwork: medium to object to concept to art, Chicago: University of Chicago Press (illus.).

2010 Apel, Dora. “Bibliography: Memory Effect,” Bruno David Gallery Publications (catalogue).

Stewart, Garrett. “Lector/Spector: Borges and the Bibliobjet,” Bruno David Gallery Publications (catalogue).

Pierno, Rosa. “Buzz Spector,” in La dimora del tempo sospeso [The dwelling of suspended time].

http://rebstein.wordpress.com/2010/01/11/buzz-spector/

Moynihan, Miriam. “Artist’s books speak volumes,” St. Louis-Post-Dispatch, January 17, (illus.).

Russell, Stefene. “The Breath at the Bottom of the Page,” St. Louis Magazine, Vol. 16,

issue 1 (January 2010): 176-77 (illus.).

Baran, Jessica. “Buzz Spector: Shelf Life,” Riverfront Times, February 11: 29.

Otten, Liam. “ ‘A sea of torn pages’: For Spector, books are both subject and medium” The Record,

Washington University in St. Louis (illus.).

2009 Carroll-Hackett, Mary, Kushman, Kerri, Parnell, Catherine, eds. The Poet & the Artist’s Book (exh. cat.),

Longwood University, Farmville, VA, and Pierre Menard Gallery, Cambridge, MA,

“Michael Burkard/Buzz Spector,” 47-52 (illus.).

Lyons, Joan, ed. Artists’ Books: Visual Studies Workshop Press 1971-2008, Rochester, NY: Visual Studies Workshop Press,

108 (illus.).

Rusworth, Katherine. “Bonanza of Books: Schweinfurth explores books as media, subject and object,”

Syracuse Post-Standard, May 10, Stars 11.

Kuhl, Nancy. “Day by Day: Phylum Press, Poetry, & Ephemera,” essay in American Letters & Commentary, Issue 20:

124-134 (illus.).

2008 Kimelman, Molly. “New exhibits adorn UICA,” Grand Rapids Press, December 21 (illus.).

Schwartz, Wylie. “Revisioning Art,” Ithaca Times, September 10-16: 21 (illus.).

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2008 Stewart, Garrett. “Mere Beauty,” essay in Fischer, Mirjam, ed., The Most Beautiful Swiss Books 2007 (exh. cat.),

Swiss Federal Office of Culture, Bern, Switzerland, 126-127 (illus.).

Smith, Champe, editor and curator, Mapping Correspondence: Mail Art in the 21st Century (exh. cat.),

Center for Book Arts, 15, 31 (illus.).

Whitman, Arthur. “Visiting old favorites,” Ithaca Times, March 19: 21.

Foumberg, Jason with Larson-Walker, Lisa. “The Bookish Type,” New City Chicago, January 8:

http://www.newcitychicago.com/chicago/7317.html 2007 Stewart, Garrett. “Lector/Spector: Borges and the Bibliobjet,” Variaciones Borges 24, 2007, University of Iowa: 173-196.

Pickowicz, Natasha Li. “Practicing the Art of Integration: Buzz Spector wants to bring Cornell, Ithaca art

appreciation together,” Ithaca Times, April 11-17: cover, 8-9 (illus.).

Hubert, Judd D. and Sahak, Judy Harvey. “A Poetic Coup d’Etat: Mallarmé’s Influence On Artists’ Books,” in

Mallarmé’s Coup d’Etat (exh. cat.), Clark Humanities Museum and Ella Strong Denison Library,

Scripps College, Claremont, CA: 43.

2006 David, Elliott. “Finally, Buzz Spector,” Bookslut.com, Art Slut Column, December 2006:

http://www.bookslut.com/art_slut/2006_12_010340.php

Hawkins, Margaret. “Clever pieces show that by the word, it’s still art,” Chicago Sun Times, April 28, 2006: NC45.

2005 Brollo, Deirdre. “An Open Book: The Artist’s Book and Palimpsestic Space,” essay in Gerbaz, Alex and Mayes, Roby, eds.,

Palimpsests: Transforming Communities, Perth, Australia: Division of Humanities,

Curtin University, 9, 13, 15 (illus.).

Hiebert, Helen. “New Paperworks by Buzz Spector,” Hand Papermaking, Vol. 20, no. 2 (Winter 2005): 42-43 (illus.).

Bright, Betty. No Longer Innocent: Book Art in America, 1960-1980, New York: Granary Books,

2005: 10-11, 42, 227, 253 (illus.).

Camper, Fred. “Brute Materiality,” Chicago Reader, September 9, 2005: Section 2, 26 (illus.).

2004

“First Impression: Buzz Spector, Between the Sheets, 2003,” Art on Paper, Vol. 8, no. 5 (May/June 2004): 42 (illus.).

Bury, Stephen. “On the Royal Road,” Art Monthly (UK), No. 274 (March 2004): 39.

Church, Amanda. “Pages at Cristinerose / Josée Bienvenu Gallery,” Art on Paper,

Vol. 8, no. 4 (March/April 2004): 84 (illus.).

Dawson, Jessica. “Picture Books,” Washington Post, February 19, 2004: C05 (illus.).

2003 Sholis, Brian. “Pages,” Artforum.com, Picks, 12-18-03: http://www.artforum.com/archive/id=6057&search=Pages

Cutajar, Mario. “Paintings by Letters,” ArtScene, Los Angeles.

Geyer, Nancy. “Booked Solid: artist Buzz Spector Turns Books into sculptural objects,” Ithaca Times,

September 24-30: 17 (illus.).

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2002 Hirsch, Faye. “Working Proof: Buzz Spector, as if,” Art on Paper, Vol. 7, no. 2 (November 2002): 83-84 (illus.).

Packard, Andrea, “Framing Space for Peace,” and Fineberg, Jonathan, “Buzz Spector’s Lists,” essays in Buzz Spector:

Public/Private Peace: Selections from the Swarthmore College Peace Collection (exh. cat.), List Art Gallery,

Swarthmore College, Swarthmore, PA: 40 pp (illus.).

Roots, Garrison. Designing the World’s Best Public Art, Mulgrave, Victoria, Australia: The Images Publishing Group Pty Ltd,

148-149 (illus.).

JRW [Julie Rodrigues Widholm]. “Buzz Spector,” in Life Death Love Hate Pleasure Pain: Selected Works from the

Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, Collection (exh. cat.), Chicago: 234-35 (illus.).

Hyde, James. “Buzz Spector at Cristinerose,” Art in America, April 2002: 148-49 (illus.).

Princenthal, Nancy. “Artists’ Book Beat,” Art on Paper, Vol. 6, no. 4 (March/April 2002): 99.

Cohen, Keri Guten. “Polaroids capture book still lifes,” Detroit Free Press, February 3, 2002: 6E (illus.).

2001 Westbrook, Adele, ed. A Creative Legacy: A History of the National Endowment for the Arts

Visual Artists’ Fellowship Program, New York: Harry N. Abrams, Inc., 2001: 200 (illus.).

Mendelson, Jordana. “Introduction: Postcards from Albums to the Academy?” Visual Resources, Vol. XVII: 373-382 (illus.).

Donohoe, Victoria. “Photography exhibit focuses on images of peace in history,” Philadelphia Inquirer,

November 18, 2001: H (illus.).

Johnson, Ken. “Buzz Spector,” New York Times, October 5, 2001: E32.

Latter, Ruth. “Pictorial Vocabulary spells out one of best shows in town,” Daily Progress,

Charlottesville, VA, March 15, 2001: D2.

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SELECTED PUBLIC COLLECTIONS Albright-Knox Art Museum, Buffalo, NY The Art Institute of Chicago The British Library, London, England Brooklyn Museum of Art Library Chicago Public Library Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, DC Cranbrook Art Museum, Bloomfield Hills, MI Getty Research Institute Library, Santa Monica, CA Houghton Library, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA Illinois State Museum, Springfield Jersey City Museum Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY Krannert Art Museum, University of Illinois,Champaign, IL Kunstbibliothek, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Germany The Lannan Foundation, Los Angeles Los Angeles County Museum of Art Milwaukee Art Museum Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago Museum of Contemporary Art, North Miami, FL Museum of Contemporary Photography, Columbia College Chicago Museum of Modern Art/Franklin Furnace, Archive Collection, New York Orange County Art Museum, Newport Beach, CA Luigi Pecci Centre for Contemporary Art, Prato, Italy Rhode Island School of Design Library, Artists’ Books Collection Ruth and Marvin Sackner Archive of Concrete and Visual Poetry, Miami Beach, FL Samek Art Gallery, Bucknell University Tate Library, Tate Britain, London, England Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, MN Washington University in St. Louis, Special Collections, Olin Library Whitney Museum of American Art, New York Yale University Library, New Haven, CT Jane Voorhees Zimmerli Art Museum, Rutgers University

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ARTISTS Laura Beard Heather Bennett Lisa K. Blatt Bunny Burson Carmon Colangelo Alex Couwenberg Jill Downen Yvette Drury Dubinsky Beverly Fishman Damon Freed Douglass Freed Joan Hall

Richard Hull Ellen Jantzen Michael Jantzen Kelley Johnson Howard Jones (Estate) Chris Kahler Bill Kohn (Estate) Leslie Laskey Peter Marcus Patricia Olynyk Gary Passanise Judy Pfaff

Daniel Raedeke Tom Reed Frank Schwaiger Charles Schwall Christina Shmigel Thomas Sleet Shane Simmons Buzz Spector Cindy Tower Ken Worley Monika Wulfers

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