"In an age of electronic media and virtual simulacra 'What is a book?' is a common question. This is the question that Chen and Meador, two veteran practitioners near the top of any serious list of contemporary book artists, address in 'How Books Work.' This elegantly simple book marries structure and content in the best tradition of artists' books. It begins: 'What is a book? A book is an experience.' And ends: 'A book starts with an idea. And ends with a reader.'" — Vamp & Tramp, Booksellers website, December 15, 2016.
"This is one of three books that is based on work I did in Ganze Autonomous Prefecture. I was there as part of an interdisciplinary research team, documenting traditional Tibetan book culture, and much of the information we collected has never been published. I spent part of this summer [2012] printing these books that explore ideas of iteration and repetition that are connected to the practice of traditional Tibetan book production" — Artist's statement at the Vamp & Tramp Booksellers' website, viewed on November 13, 2015.
"The photographs in this work were taken at the Visual Studies Workshop in Rochester, New York in December, 2011. The dustjacket was printed at the Center for Book and Paper at Columbia College Chicago in February, 2012." — Colophon.
Based on photographs of the Iveria, a former tourist hotel in Tbilisi now used to house Georgian refugees from Abkhazia.