Maintenance in the Year of ...

Margaret Bremmer was an artist and illustrator in Chesterville, Ontario.

This is obviously a very well-conceived book. The artist / author has made a personal gift of each copy by including a silk bookmark (hand-made by himself) and two lovely colour postcards (photos by the author). Coach House claims it is “one of the most intriguing visual books we have ever produced”; I believe them. There is a lovely introduction — by David Hlynsky — on green tissue paper. The book is entirely hand-printed (and quite legible!) and includes many small illustrations. It is the 1981 dreams of artist Stephen Cruise, with a fade-in and -out (literally, lightly inked) of the last and first few days of 1980 and 1982. The fade-ins and fade-outs are reproduced from the actual dreambook. However, the main body of the text is developed from the original pages; the same wording, more carefully done drawings, a few days combined on one page in a pleasing arrangement.

Cruise began to keep a daily notebook, occasionally including dreams, in 1973. By 1978 the notebook had evolved into the dreambook. Dreams were systematically remembered and recorded each day. I was glad to have a bit of background from the publisher’s sheet; none is included in the book.

But who is this book aimed at? If at artists, I would have found it most interesting to see how dream recall influences his artwork, since according to the publisher “the dreambook became a rich source of images for Cruise’s sculptures and installations, and … has formed the basis of much of his creative work.” How about some photographs, or even maquette drawings of some of the works inspired by those dreams? If the book is aimed at those interested in dream recall, it would have been made more interesting by including details of Cruise’s method. Is it a traditional process? or one he developed himself? Exactly how is it done? If Maintenance is aimed at bibliophiles, especially those who like something a bit unusual, this may just hit the mark.