An Annotated Awakening

This book contains a novel, Kate Chopin’s The Awakening, now in the public domain, visited by Lisa Occhipinti’s hand and retitled An Annotated Awakening to denote the interference. It is a verbatim rendition, akin to a cellist playing a suite composed by, say, Bach. Reviled for being “too modern” when it was published in 1899, its depiction of a woman’s interiority and infidelity was considered vulgar. In fact, the tale is a timeless one and part of what drew Lisa to it. The other part is Chopin’s language: fertile yet succinct. Each of the thirty-nine chapters includes a seamless and symbiotic pairing of an underlined passage wed to a collage from a long-forgotten stash of Lisa’s. Handwritten definitions for obscure or antiquated terms round out the liaison. The result is a venture on how one woman’s work can move that of another, and over a century later.

Softcover

5.5 x 8.5”

212 pages

39 color illustrations

ISBN 9788350700589

A one-of-a-kind, hand-bound artist book made during the early stages of the pandemic has become this elegantly published volume. Seamless cut-and-paste collages are partnered with free verse, secular devotions. Without preaching, these pairings are intended to give the reader an interval to connect to an inner world as it relates to the natural world. Just as stained glass images in churches and temples are meant to aid contemplation, so do these images function. Reverence for the environment is articulated through such passages as Patience, Piety, Stewardship, Silence. Read it cover to cover, open on a whim or select a reading from the table of contents. Wholly secular, it is a pastoral created for the exigencies of our time.

Softcover

6 x 9”

54 pages

18 color illustrations

ISBN 9780578380360

The edges between fact and fiction are blurred as an old book title is rendered anew through the lens of Lisa Occhipinti. Prose assembled from random text, accompanies 23 color photographs in this book that tells the story of a woman’s quest to match her inner landscape to an outer one in an effort to define home. A maker of one-of-a-kind artist books, Lisa fashions new content from existing books, merging narrative and time. Raintree County is her first limited-edition artist book. Carefully cut and culled text is fashioned into a new narrative that hovers somewhere between missive and memoir. Every word is devoutly selected, like choosing steppingstones to cross a secluded stream. Designed to look like snapshots in an album, images are created from found photos, re-shot and edited into concise visuals that can stand on their own but are wed to the text so craftily that one does not know which came first: the writing or the art. Imaginative yet earthy, private yet expansive, it is a book intended to be collected and read over and over, where beginning, middle and end shift their order.

Edition of 100

Softcover

5 x 7”

62 pages

ISBN 9780578472140

The pages of Bones Bared tell what it means to fully commit a life to art-making, at the crossing from one century into the next. Lisa reflects upon herself, her art and the world around her while sharing experiences that are the details that allow us to connect. The book is an intimate interlocution on the private tenacity required to dedicate a life lived with meaning and intent. It is not a personal chronology but an eclectic treatise that embraces revelation, observation, anecdotes and a simple candidness in conversational prose that is polished yet pure. The reader is brought to an inner chamber that is recognizable and relatable where bits of learning, little facts, things read and private musings are shared. Punctuated with illustrations and photographs, and set within a context of female art history, nothing about this book is sentimental but rather insightful and humanistic.

Softcover

5.83 x 8.27”

130 pages

17 color illustrations

ISBN 9780578822518