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In retrospect, it was the best thing for me that I was put in this whole group of people but I could work there and be almost totally invisible. I was so shy, I also had long hair and I was always lurking behind it.
IB In the beginning, I thought people were right and it was a mistake, but now it’s considered my first best-designed book. A colleague of mine at the time described it as a giant, gigantic mistake. But a brilliant mistake. Since 1964, she has lived and worked in Paris, France. [3] Prior to that, she lived and worked in Guerrero, Mexico from 1959 to 1963. Pillar of Inquiry/Supple Column". Whitney Museum of American Art. Archived from the original on April 16, 2017 . Retrieved June 26, 2017. IB I was one of the youngest people to ever design these books so there was a lot of envy in the group because everybody wanted to do it. This was the job. Nobody in that design department ever got it, it would always go to famous designers and suddenly I got the job! There were four people including me at the Government Printing Office who sat at the same table and people actually left, they were so jealous. They really couldn't handle the fact that the youngest had come in and suddenly got this job everybody wanted. IB The boss at the design department of the Printing Office was my teacher. And I was always a hard worker, both as a painter and as a designer, and I discovered the work of Wim Crouwel and Total Design. I was so into his whole system of typography, I loved it. So when I had to do an internship as part of my undergraduate, I applied to Total Design – and they rejected me.INT But the response wasn’t necessarily all positive, was it? There was quite a lot of controversy at the time! She photographed extensively with her Rolleiflex. Her subjects included the architecture of Felix Candela and artists active in Mexico. Gaze, Delia; Mihajlovic, Maja; Shrimpton, Leanda (1997). Dictionary of Women Artists: Introductory surveys; Artists, A-I. Taylor & Francis. p.683. ISBN 978-1-884964-21-3. IB Yeah, at the time, I just thought that was how it works! You simply get jobs! But now I think, how amazing… So I don’t think about it. I only do the projects I think I should do and I can really work on and people should give me freedom. I always do my best to make something good but you never know. There are so many reasons why things come together to make a project work and there are even more reasons why something becomes a failure. It's difficult.
INT As a designer, you’ve built up a reputation for creating beautifully tactile books. Have you always been interested in objects?
Books
IB Yes. That’s also why for me it is so nice to study at the Vatican Library. All these things which are important for me really have been around already for 500 years. Making books is the most stable medium ever, it’s proved its ability to share information. I think that making a book is a controlled act like a painting or video work, it’s an integral cultural part of our society. And therefore I think that books should also be treated like that. The book is a part of our knowledge and so the book needs attention. Depending on what the content of the book is, it has to have a specific size or it has a weight, or it has volume or there's a specific structure. That's all very important. INT Materiality is a massive part of what you do – scale, weight, paper choices. How do these things help you communicate concepts, and why is this important to you? IB Yeah, it’s true! I’m going to Paris for a project soon and I don’t have copies! I often have to buy them. I buy my own books! INT You’re an avid collector of books and have a library upstairs, how long have you been collecting?
Designer Irma Boom won the Gold Medal for the"Most Beautiful Book in the World" Prize givenat the Leipzig Book Fair What she does not, for instance, want to discuss is the fundamental and ancient role of weaving in human society, its function as a metaphor, its place in myth. She thought about all that many years ago when she was travelling round Latin America on a Fulbright scholarship in the late 1950s, studying pre-Columbian textiles. She had been inspired in that line of study by her Yale art history professor, the hugely influential George Kubler, author of The Shape of Time, who not only showed his students a lot of slides of Andean mummy bundles but “looked like a walking mummy bundle … a fascinating man, he presided over his classes in such a powerful way”. INT A big moment for you was when you got to design the annual Dutch postage stamp book in 1987. Previously it had been designed by Wim Crouwel, Karl Maartens and Gert Dumbar. How did you manage to land that job at such a young age? Cordes Sauvages/Hidden Blue (2014). Photograph: Michael Brzezinski/The Deighton Collection. Courtesy of Alison Jacques Gallery, London IB Yeah, people from all over the world starting coming to the Government Printing and Publishing Office to meet the designer who made those books and where they made them. I would just show them my table downstairs. Actually, when I left the job, they asked me what I wanted to have and I said the table where I made the stamp books.It was crazy. That’s basically how I got my job doing what I do today. In the beginning, people only knew me because of those books.
IB There needs to be some challenge in it. For example, last year I spent five months in Rome as a resident at the Vatican Library – it’s something I’ll continue next year. When I was invited it seemed like such a good moment to be able to study books, to look at what happened to the book. For me, there were two things going on. I’m the producer, the maker of the book but I’m also the researcher of the book so that's a parallel path. I will also make a publication at some point on my Vatican studies. It’s such a good source also to be able to see where I am as a book designer. IB Yeah. I thought it was so horrible! I told my teacher, and the teacher said, “They didn’t hire you? Unbelievable! Come to the place where I work instead.” So I became an intern at the Printing and Publishing Office, before interning at Studio Dumbar. In those days, it was incredibly famous but it was also tiny, and very artistic. And I loved the way they worked. IBWell, when he saw my work, he said: “You belong to the fine art department.” So I didn’t go to the Arnhem Art School, I went to the AKI Academy of Art and Design which was a totally radical and crazy school, famous for art but also applied arts.
Exhibitions
IB Well, after art school I started to work in The Hague at the Government Publishing and Printing Office, in the design department, and in one of the last years I was there, Julius was too. I immediately fell in love with him – he was this very cute, nice boy. His surname is Vermeulen, which is sort of a common name, so I didn’t think anything of it. At some point, I asked, after I’d already fallen in love with him, “Are you related to Jan Vermeulen?” And he said, “That’s my father!” From that moment on, I thought, “OK, I have to keep this guy!” Danto, Joan Simon, and Nina Stritzler-Levine as well as illustrations of the artist's working tools, related drawings, photographs, and chronology. Published in association with the Bard Graduate Center for Studies in the Decorative Arts, Design, and Culture In 2013, the 18-foot-high Pillar of Inquiry/Supple Column was included in the Whitney Biennal. [14]
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