Mary Button

The Faulkner Book is an artist book that attempts to illustrate The Sound and the Fury by writing the entire text out by hand, layering drawings based on civil rights movement photographs with confederate currency, Reconstruction-era propaganda and images from Southern folklore. I grew up in the American South and my artwork is an attempt to understand the culture and history of this place and any artist who attempts to understand the South and Southerners must grapple with the legacy of William Faulkner. The Sound and the Fury is as iconic as its author. Flannery O’Connor once said of Faulkner’s influence on Southern literature, “The presence alone of Faulkner in our midst makes a great difference in what the writer can and cannot permit himself to do. Nobody wants his mule and wagon stalled on the same track the Dixie Limited is roaring down.” The very landscape of my home has been altered by the words of one man and The Faulkner Book is as much about that book and that man as it is about my home.

© Mary Button