Emma Magenta – Sydney born internationally acclaimed artist, illustrator, author of adult picture books; The Peril of Mag­nif­i­cent Love, A Gor­geous Sense of Hope, The Ori­gin of Lament and The Grad­ual Demise of Phillipa Finch, professional dilettante, capoeira athlete, mother, lover, tweeter, philosopher, goddess and master of robust whimsy – greets us with a smile, a red flower in her hair and a golden sparkly sequined shirt (the modern day woman’s armour against tedium and mediocrity). There is a welcoming effusiveness about Emma, as she opens her bookcase to us, makes tea for us in a house lined with art and ideas and souvenirs and the sounds of children sword-fighting in the next room.       

As the morning stretches into afternoon, Emma takes us through the formative books, who have made her who she is – and looks forward into a future fuelled by insatiable curiosity, poetry and wonder about the world with its beautiful, bizarre people and their practices.

Ever since I was a kid, books have been my salvation and  to me, they are portals into a different dimension.   Generally, I love a lot of illustrated books – obviously it’s what I do. To me they’re just like fragments of my dream world so I collect them, they’re like children to me – and they hold a memory of that experience of when I read that book.

On the shelves in her study, there are pictures and photos, birds nests huddled together, illustrated books, notebooks, her own pastel-spined books stand to attention next to her desk as the dappled light streams in. I notice thick brown tomes, ancient antique books.

I worked at Berkelouw Books for ten years and I was in charge of antiquarian books –  and often I had to process the secondhand books – and if the book was too damaged and not worth restoring they would just chuck them in the bin and to me that was like throwing a way a newborn child – so I used to go and rescue them  – they know this. So it’s  the actual object that I love – but I’m also obsessed with certain subjects as well. I love looking at technical books – I love all those old illustrations as well. I’m an information junky  – I will read on how the body works and I’ll prefer to look at a book rather than go on the Internet – I like having it there and pouring over the pictures.

And I love explorers and travels up there – I love illustrations and etchings – as I did it at art school.  Because of that bin at Berkelouw’s, I’ve developed an intuitive sense about what books are worth saving and I’ve now accrued an incredible collection.

I’ve always loved books. I didn’t go “I want to be a writer,” I’ve always written since I was a kid, it wasn’t my intention. I just saw myself as an artist – and was drawing while I was there – it just happened, it was a very organic process. I was working with writers who saw me as a professional dilettante playing capoeira full time and liked to draw with my left hand – so when I got the book deal –which was the terrible part of working with people who were studying writing while I was just drinking cups of tea and doing hand stands on the second floor.

It probably looked like life was unfair – I did have an urge and was putting a book together – a picture book but that was just for my own happiness.

I ask Emma if her house was burning – what would be the books she’d rescue from the flames first?

The Red Book  Carl Jung | Not just for fiscal purposes, I just love that book.

The Diary of Frida Kahlo: An Intimate Self-Portrait  Carlos Fuentes  | And I know you can replace the book, but its’ that copy, that particular book, It’s my book.

Catcher in the Rye  J. D. Salinger | It’s not a first edition but it is a hard copy and a really beautiful copy and I love that book. In fact, I’d salvage my whole Salinger collection.

Probably my own books because I’m not buying my own books back from the publisher, which is what I’d have to do. 

Amulets which you can’t get any more about indigenous cultures merging spiritual concept with art, for example making a drawing to heal someone. 

And I’d probably save my Rumi collection.

Of course it’s the Map books – yes, I’m into cartography – there are probably worth more but it’s the sentimental connection to the books that I’d want to rescue from the flames first.

You’ve seen a lot of the world: When traveling, do you take a book?

The first time I ever travelled I took a whole bunch of books and cassette tapes with me and then  by the time I got to London I just got rid of them- I should have made a thousand mix tapes but .…

Books I had – I always take poetry – my Sylvia Plath collection and Margaret Atwood ( I love her poetry more than her novels) – and I was going through my Herman Hesse phase so I had his collection – but I go through writers as I go through stages.

A friend bought me a Kobo and I have to charge it up and try to load some things up – I don’t use it. But because I don’t go out much – I stay at home and read. But when travelling?  I’ve always got to have something to read. I often take a lot of non-fiction books with me when I travel. But if for some reason I’m on holidays where I know I won’t be interrupted I will take a fiction book so I can get lost in it.

And I wondered what were the formative books, the books from her childhood or her past who have made her who she is today?

From when I was about three I was looking at Peanuts cartoons  and when I think about that now I find it interesting that I’ve become a cartoonist in some ways. I was also obsessed with Enid Blyton on a profound level: she is so weird – if you read it now you think “Oh my god, she’s got terrible language, it’s awful” but I grew up with The Faraway Tree and the concept that there could be magic elsewhere – that was vital in my childhood – I grew up with and absolutely obsessed with any stories about finding other worlds or mysterious things: Playing Beattie Bow by Ruth Park and Bridge to Terabithia by Katherine Paterson.

At that moment Emma hunts through her crowded bookcase:

This book is an all time favourite – “The Wicked Wicked Ladies in the Haunted House” written by Mary Chase – I would go to the library get it out, read it, have to return it, wait a week and get it out again… It’s about this girl who didn’t fit in at home and ran away and went into a mansion where she could time travel back in time when it was a functioning mansion. It was possessed by seven sisters and they came to life from these paintings. There’s something about the whole aspect of time travel, that there is magic in the ordinary and this sense of what was 2D becoming 3D that was most inspiring.

That book changed my life.

I decided then I wanted to write and I would practice for years trying to write the best scary story – but they were always shit… but it did change my life and I became obsessed with books and what books can do for you. 

I identified with this girl, it was quite a weird horror story when you think about it. I think writing was far more adventurous back then and I think there is a place for darkness in children’s’ books – I just think things have become so politically correct that kids are fed these generic, saccharine stories now and so they don’t have the skills to handle the darkness – and those books have stayed with me because they touch on darkness and explain the unfathomable and they don’t explain it – they touch on it and to me the journey forward is the mystery – not running from the mystery – those books were my shapers.

 Do you give books away?

Yes… it’s why I have no books and can you please publish this: “Tony Dupe please give me back my “For Esmé—with Love and Squalor” by J. D. Salinger!”  I had to go buy a replacement copy – a penguin – and it’s just not the same – I want MY copy back, THAT edition.

So do I give away my books? Yes I do. All the time. And some I want back. 

Are there books you wish you had?

Always. Generally, if there’s a novel I want – I buy them and I love artist’s books and if I could I’d just collect them. There is a website called “Book by its cover” it’s a blog where she collects hand-made artists books – and some of them are just exceptional. Just beautiful books. I love that.

I’ve been concerned with how people have been seeing books – I don’t want people to abandoned them because they think it’s not worthwhile. If anything – people shifting over to technology is fine but there is nothing more sensual than holding a book and it just increases its cultural value. I think holding an object adds value to it. And that is especially true of books.

On a tour of her bookshelves, Emma unfurls her favourite word-less children’s book – Scenes from Central Park… she opens wide Tolkiens Lord of the Rings, she opens tomes of art and images of totems and artefacts – and its one swirl of colour and possibility: portals into other dimensions.

About Emma Magenta

Emma Magenta began her career draw­ing and writ­ing her thoughts down on brown paper bags while work­ing at Berkelouw Books in Padding­ton. After pin­ning them to the front win­dow, they accrued a cult sta­tus and a pub­lish­ing deal was offered to her by Australian publishing phenomenon Bradley Trevor Grieve. Since then, she has writ­ten and illus­trated sev­eral adult pic­ture books; The Peril of Mag­nif­i­cent Love, A Gor­geous Sense of Hope, The Ori­gin of Lament and The Grad­ual Demise of Phillipa Finch. These books explore aspects of the feminine psyche, one’s emotional world and the secret life of rela­tion­ships.

Augusta Supple and Kathy Luu  had tea with Emma Magenta on 13 April 2013. Images by Kathy Luu.

© Hello Bookcase 2013. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited.

The first thing that greets you when you walk into the office of  architect Stephen Collier is his large red bookcase.  Stephen is passionate about books and this comes out within his collection  sourced from his travels, exhibitions/museums/galleries and local bookstores. His bookcase goes beyond books on art and architecture and all are well loved and used as they spill out of the case and onto the work spaces.

Stephen let us peer into his bookcase to share with  you.

When I was working in Barcelona, the urbanist architect I was working for had a library – this revered  space  with an amazing collection of books – all in glass cabinets around the room.  I studied in an environment  where the people I looked up to – my  mentors saw the value of establishing a library.   They would always talk to/with the books – they would just grab books out when talking about a project or to  a client.

The architecture and art books that I use for work are critical to actually  see the printed work. 

Stephen brings down a large hard covered art book from the shelf. I picked this up in Italy and it is so heavy.  There is nothing like that and  no way you can reproduce that smell or the feel of a book in any other format.

There is a richness to it – I could never get rid of these and I am still growing it and I don’t plan to stop.

Five books Stephen  would not part with include:

Felix Gonzalez – Torres edited by Julie Ault | Everything that I love about art and the creative process (in architecture too) is enshrined in this book.

 Carlo Scarpa |  Scarpa inspires me with his brilliance. He combined new with old in an unparalleled way. He understood material and space. I aspire to do both.

Zenithal Light  Elias Torres | A huge part of the architect’s task is to shape the way light enters a building. This book is a quirky and beautiful catalogue of light and its emotional resonance. 

Lighter Wolfgang Tillmans | It’s just plain beautiful. 

We let Stephen put in a 8 volume box set as his fifth book.

Le Corbusier: Oeuvre Complète (Complete Works) | Le Corbusier was the master architect, who links us all back to antiquity. Pretty much everything that architects do today can be traced back to him, and much of what he did goes back to the ancients. And as so much about architecture is learning how to copy the best in others, why not go back to the source? 

Is that five already? I need some more!

The book which surprised me the most out  of my collection is “We are the animals”  by young new writer Justin Torres – is about someone growing up gay within a working class New York family.  The book is devoid of any style and there is no pretension, simply rendered and so touching. The voice is there but very light when reading the story.  Some books like that one are a revelation – the characters foibles, insecurities and intelligence come through so strongly.

When I am travelling around finding  books become a surprise. I was in Rome, it was late at night and walking back to the hotel.  I came across a bookshop – taking it all in – I found a beautiful book on Piranesi – to find something like this is so rare.  On the same trip we were  walking past a publisher and came across a book with  original drawings of the buildings of Roman Colosseum and original manuscripts.  Every time I go travelling, I buy books and sometimes when I come back  my suitcase is mostly full of books rather than clothes.

I picked up “In Praise of Shadows”  years ago and carried it around with me.  Written in 1933 by Junichiro Tanizaki, a Japanese writer – who wasn’t an architect but writes about darkness and shadows in his home and how it is quite critical  to not be afraid of dark spaces. Most houses/architecture are densely flooded with light and you don’t get a sense that you can have that darkness.  Tranquillity is as much as about shadow as it is light.

The Patrick White biography, “A Life” by David Marr made me feel like Australia was a place I wanted to be in and as a cultural place could generate interest.  

I read “Forbidden Territory and realms of strife.  The Memoirs of Juan Goytisolo” (and another book of his called “Marks of Identity“) when I was doing my PhD. When I discovered Goytisolo, I was no longer living in Barcelona but many of the themes (political strife of the Spanish Civil War, communism, the search for a creative identity) and places (in Barcelona) that he talked about were familiar to me. It was a moment in the research when all sorts of new & interesting connections were starting to show. I was deeply moved by the way he was so brutally and painfully honest with himself, of the things that had motivated him in life and of the disappointments (many of which challenged previously held beliefs). It was also the work of an exile, someone writing in a tough but fresh way about the love-hate relationship they have with the country where he grew up: looking piercingly at the things that shame them as well as the things so that irrevocably make them who they are as ethical people. He helped me to find my own narrative for writing about Australia in the PhD.

I am not into being precious about my books, but my recent foray into books of that nature is a display book part of the Thomas Demand exhibition  last year in Sydney – the whole book opens up as spiral which is basically all the photos that were part  of the exhibition which was in the MLC building – the old commercial club. Each of these  rooms had a photo in it and the book is a representation of the exhibition.

 As I have gotten older, worked on different projects and have been  attracted by different ideas, the books I look for have expanded and  tend to be more specialised. I have become more eclectic and universal in my tastes.

About Stephen Collier

As part of his PhD Stephen published  Paradigms of Observation A Blue That is Almost Black (Un Azul Casi Negro) based  on desire, memory and beauty.

Stephen’s essay appears within the book Public Sydney – Drawing the City which was launched this month at the Museum of Sydney.

Stephen Collier is an award winning architect based in Sydney | Stephen Collier Architects | http://www.collierarchitects.com

Leigh Russell and Kathy Luu spoke to Stephen Collier on Friday 22 March 2013. Images by Kathy Luu.

© Hello Bookcase 2013. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this websites author and/or owner is strictly prohibited.