Wednesday Artist: Nick Bantock

There's no creativity without play.

~ Nick Bantock

Today, Wednesday Artist looks briefly at the career of Nick Bantock, a name recognized internationally, especially by fans of Bantock's best-selling Griffin and Sabine series, a double trilogy in which the love story of the couple is embedded in beautifully created mail art (letters, envelopes, postcards, etc.). Bantock describes the books as "fundamental to my self-understanding as an artist and writer." The most recent book in the series is The Pharos Gate: Griffin & Sabine's Lost Correspondence (Chronicle Books, March 2016). (Read a review.)

Cover Art

A 25th anniversary edition of Griffin and Sabine: An Extraordinary Correspondence (Chronicle Books) was issued in April of this year.

Bantock also is the author of the nonfiction book The Trickster's Hat: A Mischievous Apprenticeship in Creativity (TarcherPerigee, January 2014). (Read Lucy Silag's interview with Bantock, "The Art of Letting Go: Nick Bantock and Creativity", at Book Country.)

Cover Art

In addition to being a highly successful writer of more than two dozen books (fiction, nonfiction, pop-ups, and more) and of reviews, book introductions, and newspaper and magazine articles, Bantock is a painter and collagist, sculptor, and printmaker, whose work can be found in private collections around the world. He has produced cover art for hundreds of books and also is an illustrator and app artist.

In 2010-2011, the Museum of Outdoor Art, Englewood, Colorado, mounted in its indoor galleries "Nick Bantock: A Retrospective (Griffin, Sabine and Beyond)". (Read Colleen Smith's "Creator of the Popular Griffin and Sabine Saga to Exhibit Body of Work" in The Denver Post.) Part of that exhibit was "The Forgetting Room", seen in the video below:

The Forgetting Room from modchen on Vimeo.

In the short film below, directed by Jenn Strom and commissioned by Knowledge Network, Bantock talks about his artistic process:

Nick Bantock's BANTOCKart on Etsy (You'll find here affordable small graphic collages, as well as original collages and drawings, postcard art, and more.)

Nick Bantock's Blog

Nick Bantock on FaceBook and Twitter