Poem by Bill Kelly; multicolor
woodcuts by James Renner on
nineteenth-century F. J. Head
handmade paper. Text hand set
in Gill Sans. French folded folios
bound in paste paper and housed
in a clamshell box covered in
Cave paper. Edition of 35. 2006.
$950.

Bill Kelly and James Renner have collaborated on numerous projects since they started working together
in 1979—this is their first limited-edition artists’ book. In this, Kelly prompted the artist with the phrase “birds and men.” Then the poem by Kelly was written in response to Renner’s graphite drawings which were transformed into multicolor woodcut images.

According to both of them, it is a parable of folly, wherein feckless humans mark their presence while their counterparts in nature warily look on.