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Bottom Of The Lake = Fond Du Lac, Christian Patterson, Special Collections, Fleet Library

Artists' Books

68, 175 pages : illustrations (some color). Bottom of the Lake is a 256-page facsimile of the artist's family's telephone book for his hometown of Fond du Lac, printed in 1973, soon after his birth. The book includes found markings and reproductions of inserted materials, along with Patterson's own drawings, photographs and marginalia. Bottom of the Lake is a book within a book that carefully combines the original, found, fact-based phone book with the artist's highly subjective re-imagination of his hometown; it playfully juxtaposes different documentary forms and ways of seeing to create a deeply personal, darkly humorous other book. …