Pam Butler
The Good Girl Book
Book Launch and Signing
Saturday, June 26, 2010, 5–7 PM

Printed Matter is pleased to host a book launch and signing for The Good Girl Book by Pam Butler, just released by mooreartpress209.  Please join us for a reception with the artist on Saturday, June 26th, from 5-7 PM. Printed Matter is located at 195 Tenth Avenue between 21st and 22nd streets in New York City.

Using the "girlish" perspective that Butler developed in her street poster "Good Girl Project", The Good Girl Book constructs a relentless, ironic and humorous critique of the fears and fantasies that continue to dominate cultural dialogue as well as personal self-awareness.

The "Good Girl Project" consisted of a series of posters plastered on city streets in the 1990s.   Using bold marker lines in her signature cartoonish style, Butler created a public meditation on the search for self in a world of the prepackaged, homogenized and stereotyped.  These drawings, mostly of women, were mixed with words and phrases such as "good girl," "slut," "bitch," and "suppose I was very beautiful."  The Daily News wrote of Butler at the time: "she makes you think, actually think as you walk down the street."

The Good Girl Book picks up where this project left off, delving deeply into the internal madness wrought by contemporary imagery and messaging. The artist has added new material such as drawings of astronauts and "cute" forest animals, along with scattered text and ephemera from the street project, bringing new layers of angst to the original material.  The original posters appear in the book as well - cropped manipulated and collaged, or sometimes left just as drawn.  Photo documentation of the posters as installed on city streets (also cropped, collaged and as taken), keep the book grounded in the original grit of its source as an intervention in public space.

Pam Butler is a Brooklyn based artist.  She has exhibited in New York City, the States, and abroad.  She is currently at work on a new book and on installations which fuse together all the various aspects of her art practice. 
 


The artist will be present to sign books, and there will be a brief reading of Good Girl related writings at 6PM.

Printed Matter, Inc. is an independent 501(c)(3) non-profit organization founded in 1976 by artists and art workers with the mission to foster the appreciation, dissemination, and understanding of artists' books and other artists' publications.

Printed Matter, Inc. has received support, in part, through grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, the New York State Council on the Arts, the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, Altria Group Inc, the Milton & Sally Avery Arts Foundation, The Cowles Charitable Trust, the Foundation for Contemporary Arts, The Gladys Krieble Delmas Foundation, The Gesso Foundation, The Horace W. Goldsmith Foundation, the Schoenstadt Family Foundation, Tekserve, The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, and individuals worldwide.