More Sandra Brownlee goodness

Original notebook of Sandra Brownlee. Image © Keith McLeod

Departures and Returns catalogue. Image © Keith McLeod

When is an exhibition catalogue a work of art in itself? When it is the catalogue for Sandra Brownlee's 2009 solo show Departures and Returns at the Mary Black Gallery in Halifax, Nova Scotia. Sandra has a knack for surrounding herself with talented photographers, catalogue designers, and book binders. The catalogue was designed by Sarah Bodine of Sans Serif Studio in New Jersey. Sandra and Sarah took a collaborative approach to creating the catalogue. According to Sandra, Sarah has a long background as an editor in Philadelphia, where Sandra lived for many years before moving back to Nova Scotia in 2005. Sarah gave Sandra assignments like find 10 quotes from your notebooks that still resonate with you. Sandra and Sarah each chose pages from Sandra's notebooks. They didn't necessarily like each other's pages. From this exercise emerged a modest chronicle. In addition to the catalogue, they produced a deluxe edition that was sold for $500 each. The deluxe version was a conscious distillation of what is in the notebooks and includes an original black-and-white weaving, and a piece of Sandra's polka dot curtain from her studio, among other things. Unfortunately the deluxe edition was beyond my budget.


Niko Silvester of White Raven Ink bound the catalogues. Niko's account of binding the catalogues can be found here.