The late Julie S. Graham was a longtime Kingston Gallery member, a well-respected artist in the Boston area, and a loved faculty member at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts. Colleagues and friends, Mags Harries and Chantal Zakari have gathered Graham's visual books along with some works on paper that have sprung from these books. 

Part sketchbook, and part artist's books, these objects reflect her careful mark-making and infinitely experimental abstract configurations in a forward-moving sequence. MFA curator Martina Tanga defines the images in the first book as "She opens with what could be read as a nocturnal abstract landscape, which gives way to ongoing permutations of the intersection of the circle and the rectangle. Motifs like small cluster dots, handles or arches, freely-drawn aggregate lines repeat throughout in rhythmic intervals." 

In book two, Graham repeatedly draws the Church San Vidal in Venice. Art historian, colleague, and friend, Silvia Bottinelli introduces the work as "She drew the campanile over and over in the span of a few days in June 1999. One page after another, detailed realism gives way to dots and shapes that trace the proportions of city corners. Different materials -- "glue, plaster, tape, pencil, charcoal," as she writes down on June 15 – overlap on the surface. Through both form and materiality, Graham's works on paper fully embody the stratification of layers that Venice is made of." The third book, made in 2017, is one of the last pieces of work we have from Graham, and at 72 pages, features perhaps the most complete visual narrative. 

On Sunday, March 6, 2022, Kingston gallery will host a book launch event for the facsimile of three of these books. This digitally printed in Korea, the limited edition of 200 sets, and the sales of the works on paper will raise funds for the Julie S. Graham Prize in Painting at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts. 

To reserve your copy, please email chantal@thecorner.net

Julie S. Graham, Three Visual Books, 2022, limited edition of 200 
Book 1, 8.5 x 7.5 inches, saddle-stitched, 116 pages, 2018 
Book 2 (Venice book), 4.5 x 6 inches, saddle-stitched, 36 pages, 1999 
Book 3, 5 x 5 inches, saddle-stitched, 72 pages, 2017