The Lottery by Melissa Catanese
80 pages, signed
Hardcover, 9.5” x 6.5”, 66 photographs
Design by Giulia Boccarossa
The Ice Plant & Witty Books, May 2023
$38
ships July
Special Edition, signed
(includes a book + risograph print folio)
edition of 50
$150
A wild, insomniac cousin to her somnambulist classic Dive Dark Dream Slow (The Ice Plant, 2012), Melissa Catanese's The Lottery reads like a work of speculative fiction: a glimpse into an anxious human civilization suspended between uncertain futures and the aftermath of its distant and recent past. Seamlessly combining her own recent photographs with anonymous vernacular photos, press images, and NASA archival imagery, Catanese's intuitive editing re-animates the images' dormant surfaces, evoking the mob mentality and tribalism of Shirley Jackson's short story “The Lottery” as well as the cosmic indeterminacy at the heart of our unfolding present. Throughout the sequence, we see catastrophic forces and events punctuated by archetypal scenes of serenity, tenderness, and fragility. Crowds gather to gawk, passively entertained by unseen horrors. Lone figures claw, swim and bend, haunted and creaturely, isolated and immersed in primordial landscapes. Brief fragments of text from Virginia Woolf hint at a tentative meaning to the madness, a glimmer of hope for regeneration.
The Lottery Special edition
9 risograph prints, 6.5 x 9.5 inches
1 tiled risograph print, 19.5 x 28.5 inches
Screen-printed folio
Printing and production by theretherenow.
Graphic design by Giulia Boccarossa
edition of 50
$150 + shipping
The Lottery special edition includes a copy of the book and a separate risograph print folio. The folio is screen-printed and contains nine individual risograph prints.The reverse side of each print comes together to form one large tiled print.
Light Work Print Edition
Printed by the artist on the occasion of the Spring 2023 release of the artist’s book. The print edition comes with a copy of the book + a print
Print specifications:
California poppy field #2, May 2021
13x19 inches
Pigment print on Japanese washi, hand-coated in beeswax
$250 + shipping
