A selection of images from the first title published by Siglio Press in Los Angeles.
From 1963 to 1978, Joe Brainard created more than a hundred works
of art that appropriated the classic comic strip character Nancy.
Along with essays by Ann Lauterbach and Ron Padgett, The Nancy Book features more than fifty works, including Brainard's collaborations with poets Bill Berkson, Ted Berrigan, Robert Creeley, Frank Lima, Frank O'Hara, and James Schuyler.
"Joe found in Nancy his most inventive, versatile companion and guide," Ann Lauterbach writes in The Nancy Book.
"If is a powerful little word, lifting reality into suspension, holding the present briefly hostage to a consequential future: If this, then that," writes Ann Lauterbach in The Nancy Book. "If erects a tiny bridge over which the present moves toward either promise or terror."
"Joe’s use of Nancy was influenced by his friends and the art we were all seeing and making," writes Ron Padgett in The Nancy Book.