Jonathan Reeve Price - The Liquid Border: The Rio Grande from El Paso to the Gulf of Mexico

Selected Works

Poetry

Icons

Reviews

5.0 out of 5 stars Icons Recast as Emblematic Human Archetypes

Reviewed in the United States on April 1, 2024

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Jonathan Reeve Price's "Icons" takes a fascinating deep dive into the familiar symbols that populate our digital interfaces. With an insightful blend of personal reflection, cultural analysis, and poetic interpretation, Price examines the metaphorical underpinnings and deeper representational meanings imbued within these seemingly simple graphical elements.

Rather than mere instructional pictograms, Price reveals how icons carry embedded historical, psychological, and philosophical resonances - whether evoking ancient religious symbolism, giving visual form to existential queries, or hinting at the paradoxes of human behavior.

His accessible yet exploratory meditations transform the mundane computer icon into a prism reflecting the richness of human experience and our enduring desire to understand our place in the world.

"Icons" elevates user interface design from the purely functional into a symbolic art form worthy of contextual interpretation. Price's metaphorical excavations encourage us to look anew at the digital hieroglyphs we take for granted.

- John V. Wylie, MD

5.0 out of 5 stars I don't know anything quite like it.

Reviewed in the United States on April 30, 2024

This little gem brings together the savvy of a tech-maven with the imagination of. a poet, producing a small book dense with observation about those little things we take for granted on our screens: the icons. For those in the computer world, Price's sly comments on each icon will tease their minds, and for artists, visual and the literary, the poems will be seen to interact with the images in original and surprising ways. We all know someone who would find this book illuminating.

-Peter Pitzele

Paperbound Edition
126 pages

Publication: March 15, 2024

ISBN-10: 0-9719954-8-6

ISBN-13: 978-0-9719954-8-2

Dimensions: 8 x 8 inches

Price: $9.95

Amazon page: https://amzn.to/3Vgk9oj

Hardcover Edition
126 pages

ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 979-8990368293

Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 8.6 ounces

Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 6 x 0.48 x 9 inches

$14.95

Amazon Page : https://amzn.to/44Yd6Uu

Kindle Edition:

$5.95
File size ‏ : ‎ 4426 KB

ASIN ‏ : ‎ B0CY95QNH2

Simultaneous device usage ‏ : ‎ Unlimited

Text-to-Speech ‏ : ‎ Enabled

Screen Reader ‏ : ‎ Supported

Enhanced typesetting ‏ : ‎ Enabled

X-Ray ‏ : ‎ Not Enabled

Word Wise ‏ : ‎ Not Enabled

Sticky notes ‏ : ‎ On Kindle Scribe

https://amzn.to/3VhSEtB

Viewing Hokusai Viewing Mount Fuji

Jonathan Reeve Price starts with one of Hokusai's views, disassembles it, constructs a new picture out of the pieces, as a visual critique, and adds floating text chunks—brief observations, snippets of poetry, stray thoughts.

Thumbnails of the originals let you compare the before-and-after, gauging Hokusai's wood-block print against the pixelated, sliced, and diced collage, and the scattered writings that reflect on his drive for immortality, his exploitation of newly available pigments, his fondness for the interplay of text and image, and his love for the ordinary workers and travelers out in the country.

An Afterword discusses the path that the artist and poet, Jonathan Reeve Price, took to this homage to Hokusai. He sees parallels between Hokusai's art practice and the functions available in software such as Photoshop, tactics that he has adapted to our century—zooming, revising, layering, making depth hard to read, indulging in bright blocks of color. Hokusai created more than a thousand images combining poetry and imagery, and Price points to those artworks as justification for his own mixing of language, line, and color in his responses.

In 19th century Japan, the number 36 might have reminded literate customers of the number of the immortals—the classical poets of Japan and China. But when Hokusai's series of 36 prints sold well, he added another 10 pictures. So this book offers a total of 46 digital images, followed by a critical essay, and an FAQ about the author's background. Holding this book in your hand may not make you live forever, but, who knows, it might bring you some of Hokusai's spirit.

The Liquid Border: The Rio Grande from El Paso to the Gulf of Mexico

Starting with topographical maps from the United States Geological Service, and satellite pictures from NASA, Price zooms in on the ripples in the river, the steep cliffs and undulating desert on both banks, and the odd unnatural beauty of the digital representations seen from 30,000 feet. His images and texts may help us imagine the people struggling across the river, and the trackers from the Border Patrol waiting on the American side. This exhibition is an homage to all their treks.

"How do you cut a river in half? You can't, of course—which makes the paradox of the Rio Grande even more painful in Price's thoughtful, poignant new book of poetry and digital art. The poet refers to that river, which makes up much of the physical border between the United States and its southern neighbor: "Throughout most of the river's run to the Gulf of Mexico," Price writes, "the border is in the middle of the flow, invisible, but real." …Price's volume seeks to map that liminal space in imagery and verse. Roughly half the book is given over to digital images; in them, the artist stitches together cartographs, photographs, and satellite images, many of them altered, to evoke the strange space between the two countries. Price calls these pieces "imaginary" maps and argues that they document "something close to reality, but not all there."

Accompanying the visuals are roughly a dozen thoughtful, poignant poems, many of which capture the torturous experience of those seeking entry into America. …Price is as adept with his poetry as he is with his pictures, and the combination is a moving testimony to the struggle of those who yearn for a better life elsewhere. A mournful, beautiful, and original synthesis of word and image."--Kirkus Reviews Jonathan Reeve Price, who started his career with a Doctorate of Fine Arts from Yale, has exhibited map works at dozens of galleries and museums. In addition to his conceptual and public art, Price has written books on subjects such as video art, theater, and computer software. At Apple, he created the style guide for documentation. His high-tech clients are an A-to-Z of major computer companies in the U.S. and Japan. He lives next to the Rio Grande as it flows through New Mexico. My blog: https://museumzero.blogspot.com/2019/05/liquid-border-mouth-of-rio-grande.html My site https://www.museumzero.art/the-liquid-border

Paperback: 79 pages
Publisher: The Communication Circle, LLC (June 28, 2020)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 097199546X
ISBN-13: 978-0971995468
Product Dimensions: 8 x 0.2 x 10 inches
Shipping Weight: 8.3 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)

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The Liquid Border: The Rio Grande from El Paso to the Gulf of Mexico

In a series of images, Jonathan Reeve Price explores the liquid border—the imaginary line drawn down the middle of the Rio Grande as it passes between Texas and Mexico. Starting with topographical maps from the United States Geological Service, and satellite pictures from NASA, Price zooms in on the ripples in the river, the steep cliffs and undulating desert on both banks, and the odd unnatural beauty of the digital representations seen from 30,000 feet. His images and texts may help us imagine the people struggling across the river, and the trackers from the Border Patrol waiting on the American side. This exhibition is an homage to all their treks.