Warren Lehrer: Books, Animation, Performance, Collaboration explores Warren Lehrer’s approach to visualizing poetry and prose in multi-branched projects through books, typography, animation, performance, and collaboration. The centerpiece is Lehrer’s newest book/project, Five Oceans in a Teaspoon, a collaboration with poet/investigative journalist Dennis J Bernstein (Paper Crown Press, 2019). In addition to copies of the Five Oceans in a Teaspoon book, the exhibit includes 27 prints of individual poems and a reel of a dozen animations. The exhibit also features some of Lehrer’s previous books and animations/films/performances that branch from them, including: Globalization: Preventing the Sameness of the World andclips from 1001 Voices: Symphony for a New America—offshoots of Crossing the BLVD (W.W. Norton) co-authored with Judith Sloan; and animations and films used in Lehrer’s performances of his illuminated novel A LIFE IN BOOKS: The Rise and Fall of Bleu Mobley (Goff Books). Lehrer and Bernstein’s first book/play FRENCH FRIES (1984, VSW), and other solo and collaborative bookworks provide further context.
Warren Lehrer is a writer, designer and book artist known as a “pioneer of visual literature and design authorship.” His books and multimedia projects capture the shape of thought and reunite oral and pictorial traditions of storytelling in books, animations and performance. Awards include: The Brendan Gill Prize, IPPY Outstanding Book of the Year Award, Innovative Use of Archives Award, International Book Award for Best New Fiction, three AIGA Book Awards, Media That Matters Award, grants and fellowships from NEA, NYSCA, NYFA, QCA, Rockefeller, Ford, Greenwall Foundations. He is a 2016 Honoree of the Center for Book Arts and a 2019 Ladislv Sutnar Prize laureate. His work is in many collections including MoMA, Getty Museum, Georges Pompidou Centre, Tate Gallery. A frequent lecturer and performer, Lehrer is the Leff Distinguished Professor at SUNY Purchase, a founding faculty member of SVA’s Designer As Author MFA program, and co-founder of EarSay, a non-profit arts organization in Queens, NY.
