In 2008, I spent a lost weekend googling absurd combinations of words in an attempt to discover groupings that brought back zero search results. The main rules I followed were ‘No proper nouns,’ and ‘Each word in a combination must bring back at least one search result by itself.’ I did not group the words in quotation marks, which would have meant that I was only searching for their occurrence together as phrases. Instead, I was looking for words that had never coexisted together on the internet in any way.

After much tweaking and fine-tuning, I finally compiled thirty 2- and 3-word groupings that could not be found anywhere in the linguistic cosmos of the internet. These became the basis for two artists’ books in what I called the Googled English Frontier Project.

Now that AI is in full swing, radically transforming our information universe, I decided to revisit the GEFP. At first I considered making a book with updated results. When I tested two of the original phrases using Google’s AI-assisted search, its response was something like “This is a nonsensical phrase, probably written as a joke.” Touché, bot.

So instead of re-searching the phrases to work with new results, I decided to make a book that leans into how dated the original premise already feels, after such a short time. This new book features 15 of the project’s original phrases that had zero search results in 2008. It also includes 15 of my favorite phrases that did have search results at the time. A pamphlet accompanies each copy of the book, suggesting rules for how to play the book as a game, guessing which phrases had results or not, and if so, how many results each one had.

In keeping with the retro aspect of the project, I’ve hand-set the phrases in lead type and printed them using a 3”x 5” Kelsey Excelsior press named Matilda. I’ve produced two print runs to begin with: ten copies on new Staedtler graph paper, and twenty copies on paper salvaged from notebooks from my high school and college years—a pre-internet education that is almost unfathomable today.

At present, I only have copies available that are printed on my old school notebook paper. I love the varied widths between the lines on their ruled pages, and how some lines are vertical and some horizontal, depending on the paper’s grain direction. I also love the different degrees to which the pages have yellowed—all of those rich, physical details that characterize a book with an analog body that ages much like our own.

Due to the limited number of copies available to start, I am not posting it to my shop yet. Please send inquiries to me at hockensm at gmail dot com if interested.

2026
4.25” x 4”
66 pp. + 8-page supplemental pamphlet
stab binding, with hand-marbled endsheets
letterpress
1st printing of 20 copies on ruled, vintage notebook paper; and 10 copies on new Staedtler graph paper. Both versions available in 5 colors: dark rose, blue, green, light rose, and gray.

This is a unique, handmade artist’s book based on John Cage’s artwork, 640 numbers between 1 and 4.

Cage’s original piece is a computer-generated, randomized sequence of numbers between 1 and 4 arranged in forty blocks of digits, dot-matrix printed on a sheet of office paper. While planning a project to transform it into book form, the thought occurred to me: “Why don’t I ask the numbers how they would like to be represented?” And so the idea of this “assisted self-portrait” was born.

Each step of the way, I consulted the numbers to ask questions like “How many ‘verses’ should go on this page?” “In which of 4 ways should this verse be printed?” “In which of 4 colors?” “In what quadrant of the page?” Also, “How many decorative elements should accompany the verses on this page?” “Using which of 4 techniques?” “In which quadrant?” etc. As I used each number in the sequence to answer a question, I ticked it off on my copy of Cage’s sheet. If my record-keeping can be trusted, I asked 631 questions in the course of making the book and a set of associated prints.

I was first introduced to Cage’s work by my late mentor and friend, Stephen Addiss, who in turn was a student and friend of Cage. 640 numbers has a particular significance for me because Steve and I used it as a decision-making aid in our earlier collaboration, stitching speechless.

As with all artworks that use chance methods, personal details still interjected themselves. Some of the collaged numbers are in my beloved late father’s handwriting, and some were cut out of a Sesame Street book I learned to count from as a child. In both cases, I used numbers from those particular sources because Cage’s numbers directed me to select them from my studio archive. And in the end, the entire project is a kind of collaboration with Steve, who passed away in 2022.

2025
5.625” x 8”
22 pp.
Multiple media, including letterpress, collage, assemblage, burning, brush calligraphy with sumi ink, linocut, and rubber stamp.
Unique, handmade artist’s book
$550

Available directly from our shop.

Comes with an accompanying piece of photocopy art based on Cage’s original: John Cage’s 640 numbers between 1 and 4, after repeated use by 2 generations of students, reproduced at 91% scale.

This is the print-on-demand edition of a unique artist’s book I made reimagining John Cage’s artwork 640 numbers between 1 and 4.

Cage’s original piece is a computer-generated, randomized sequence of numbers between 1 and 4 arranged in forty blocks of digits, dot-matrix printed on a sheet of office paper. While planning a project to transform it into book form, the thought occurred to me: “Why don’t I ask the numbers how they would like to be represented?” And so the idea of this “assisted self-portrait” was born.

Each step of the way, I consulted the numbers to ask questions like “How many ‘verses’ should go on this page?” “In which of 4 ways should this verse be printed?” “In which of 4 colors?” “In what quadrant of the page?” Also, “How many decorative elements should accompany the verses on this page?” “Using which of 4 techniques?” “In which quadrant?” etc. As I used each number in the sequence to answer a question, I ticked it off on my copy of Cage’s sheet. If my record-keeping can be trusted, I asked 631 questions in the course of making the book and a set of associated prints.

I was first introduced to Cage’s work by my late mentor and friend, Stephen Addiss, who in turn was a student and friend of Cage. 640 numbers has a particular significance for me because Steve and I used it as a decision-making aid in our earlier collaboration, stitching speechless.

As with all artworks that use chance methods, personal details still interjected themselves. Some of the collaged numbers are in my beloved late father’s handwriting, and some were cut out of a Sesame Street book I learned to count from as a child. In both cases, I used numbers from those particular sources because Cage’s numbers directed me to select them from my studio archive. And in the end, the entire project is a kind of collaboration with Steve, who passed away in 2022.

2025
5.25” x 8.25”
28 pp.
saddle-stapled
open edition
$12

(*If you order directly from our shop, I’ll include a piece of photocopy art based on Cage’s original piece.)

Copies are also available through Magcloud in print for $12, or in a digital version for $2. A digital preview of the entire book is available there for free.

A renga is a linked-verse form of poetry related to the haiku. Renga are traditionally created as collaborations between poets, who take turns writing verses to form the eventual sequence. The verses don’t build linearly on each other, but are expected to relate to each other with subtle references and echoes, following elaborate rules about subject and season references from verse to verse.

I’ve been playing with the idea of the accordion book as a visual renga — a linked-verse visual poem — where elements of one page spread carry over to the next and so on throughout the book. Each page spread stands alone while linking out to the visual narrative of the whole.

This is the third renga accordion book I’ve created so far, each of them a one-of-a-kind artist’s book. The five page spreads of Renga #3 are based on haiku by Matsuo Basho, Yosa Buson, Kobayashi Issa, and Taneda Santoka, forcing a collaboration between them (and myself). The haiku that I selected for each page spread follow one traditional season/subject sequence for the first five verses of a renga, with the color palettes and the colors of the backing pages of the accordion reflecting the seasons.

2025
6” x 12” (open single page-spread dimensions)
10 pp.
Hardcover accordion; Letterpress text, sumi ink, collage/assemblage, burning, and punched holes, all on Fabriano Unica printmaking paper.
Unique artist’s book
$275 (Sold / Reserved)

After is about the life of the book in the digital age and the transitory nature of all things. It’s structured in two sections using a dos-a-dos binding. The first section features photos of ghostly afterimages left behind on the glassine sheets protecting plates in a 1929 art history catalog. The real world intrudes at the end of the first section when a thumb appears in the image. As the reader flips to the second side of the dos-a-dos, the imagery pivots to include afterimages of different kinds from the outside world.

The text in the book is a blackout poem I created using a sequence of poems by 15th-century Japanese Zen monk Ikkyu as the source text. The original sequence – titled Skeletons – is an extended exploration of the same transitory theme as After. I letterpress printed the Ikkyu poems in their entirety from polymer plates before creating the new, book-length blackout poem by brushing over certain words with a combination of sumi ink and gold calligraphy ink.

The English version of Skeletons is a translation by the great John Stevens, from Wild ways: Zen poems (Buffalo, NY: White Pine Press, 2003), used with the generous permission of the publisher. The book that I photographed the afterimages of artworks from is A catalogue of paintings in the collection of Jules S. Bache (New York: privately printed, 1929).

I composed the blackout poem as an 'intentional' poem, but I use chance methods to determine which color ink to use when brushing words out: black or gold. For that, I use a printed sheet of randomized numbers between 1-4 that was created by John Cage and my mentor Stephen Addiss for a project they did together in the 1990’s. The numbers determine how many words I black out in one color before switching to the other. Each copy of the book has a different pattern of blackout coloration.

2018
10.25” x 8.25”
24 pp.
Hardcover dos-a-dos
edition of 25 + 5 a.p.
$475

Copies available for sale directly from our shop, or from Abecedarian Gallery (Denver, CO)

(I have a limited number of completed copies available and am finishing others as they are ordered, so there may be a slight delay in availability. Please contact me or the vendors above if interested.)

Sierra Suite is a collection of "found oral poems” I composed during a training session at the library where I worked. While we were being trained to use a circulation software called Sierra, I was struck by how much of the presenter's language was about authority and control, about who grants us the rights to do things in a digital environment. Taken out of context, her words resonated more broadly.

For this first book project using the poems, I hand set them in metal type and printed them on a Vandercook SP-15 proof press. The covers are also letterpress-printed, featuring a relief print from a carved piece of Davey book board. While each edition of Sierra Suite is a straightforward poetry chapbook, as I produce other editions of the poems in radically different formats it becomes an exploration of how presenting the same words in different bodies might change how we read them. After the initial letterpress edition shown here, I have produced print-on-demand, cartonera, laser-printed mini-zine, and one-of-a-kind scroll versions of the poems.

Details of the letterpress edition pictured:

2017
5.5” x 6”
24 pp.
two-sewn-as-one pamphlet binding
edition of 10
$45

SOLD OUT

names name no lasting name is a one-of-a-kind artist's book exploring the Taoist idea of the slipperiness of language, which informs a lot of my work. Each page-spread features a word in large brush calligraphy on the verso page, which I've burned away with an incense stick. The recto of each spread is a thick sumi ink wash, with flecks of gold ink handpainted to fill in the white gaps in the brush strokes. Each page also features a hidden printed image, nested inside the french-folded paper.

The theme of the inadequacy of language and its willful misuse seems to become more vital every day. To get a randomized cross section of words that were in the air when I was creating the book, I selected one word for each page by taking the first noun from a sequence of reader comments on the New York Times website. I created the hidden prints by doing a Google image search on each of the words, downloading the first result, and digitally manipulating it into a new image and print. Parts of the prints show through on each page where the words have been burned away.

2016
13” x 16.25”
8 pp.
Brush calligraphy and sumi ink wash with gold ink detail, on heavy mulberry paper
$620

SOLD

[See a PDF of the entire book here.]

we had something is a unique artist's book featuring text in brush calligraphy on a semi-translucent washi paper:

"we had / something / beautiful / and we / still do / don't we?"

Nested inside the folded, double leaves of each page is an obscured image. Each recto image is a Google Maps screen capture of the site of a major environmental catastrophe, manipulated in Photoshop to create a full-bleed abstract image in unnatural colors: pictured sites include Three Mile Island; Picher, Oklahoma; Bhopal, India, and others. Each verso image is a smaller, casual snapshot of some minor natural beauty. I burned the pages with a soldering iron, each page featuring one more burn than the previous one had.

When I originally formulated the text, I thought the book would be a broad, ironic look at the universal human tendency toward nostalgia. Instead, it became a more pointed record of amassed environmental degradation.

2016
11” x 13”
14 pp.
stab binding
brush calligraphy with inkjet printed images and burn marks
unique book

SOLD

heart sutra, remix is a handmade, accordion-fold artist's book inspired by one of the central texts of Mahayana Buddhism. It features digital collage and a poem presented in brush calligraphy. Each copy is inkjet printed, finished with unique burns through the pages, allowing it to fit snugly into a reused cassette case. 

I composed the text for "heart sutra, remix" almost 20 years ago as an oral poem when I was first learning about the Heart Sutra. For this edition, I performed the calligraphy for each page spread ten times. After finishing the calligraphy, I scanned my favorite version of each page spread and used it as the basis for the digital collages printed in the final book. 

My poem and this book aren't meant to be a commentary or an expansion on the Heart Sutra, but rather an homage, an example of the long history of chanting and copying it in calligraphy as a devotional act.

2015
3" x 4" (24" x 4" when open)
16 pp.
accordion fold
edition of 75
$45

Copies available in our shop

A follow-up to his Guide to Miracle-Making, Doctor Mister Miracles’s Vocabulary Guide for the Perplexed Miraclist is a book-long riff on a line from the Tao Te Ching: “Names can name no lasting name.” As a sometime Taoist and an all-the-time verbalist, I can’t stop thinking about that line.

The book is introduced as “A Glossary of Seventeen Terms Compiled to Vivify Your Miracle Practice.” At first it seems straightforward. Real-world sacred terms (“caritas,” “paramita”) mingle with new words to describe ideas that could benefit the world (“humilitocracy”). But as the book goes on, the system breaks down — terms grow more opaque, words are burned away on the page, and disturbing images start to invade. 

As with its contents, nothing about the book is what it seems. What looks like a stack of smudged index cards rubber-banded together is actually a painstakingly printed, hand-bound book, its sacred aspirations muddied by the inability of words to name a lasting name. 

2014
4” x 6”
48 pp.
hidden side sewing
inkjet printed
ed. of 100
$35 

Each book in the I Ching series is an expressionistic response to one of the sixty-four entries of the ancient Chinese wisdom book. The sumi-e painting that I created for I Ching #3: ‘Difficulty’ includes heavy washes, accents drawn directly with a wet ink stick, and a circle drawn with the red wax that’s usually reserved for signature seal stamps in traditional sumi-e and calligraphy.

This open edition features a scan of the original painting, inkjet-printed. I finish each copy by burning the hexagram symbol for entry #3 on the front cover with a soldering iron, and adding unique burn marks with matches.

The image for I Ching #64: ‘Unfinished’ is a play on a painting by Japanese Zen artist Sengai, called ‘Circle, Triangle, and Square,” which in turn was the inspiration for a Robert Motherwell monoprint in the 1980s.

Alternative interpretations of the hexagram include 'Not yet forded,' and 'Before completion.' It can be read as an encouraging sign that the successful achievement of a goal is in sight, or alternatively as a warning not to lose focus when something is nearly finished - perseverance is needed to see it through successfully to the end."

Details for both books so far in the I Ching Series:

2013
5.25" x 7"
4 pp.
accordion fold
open edition
$90

Dr. Mr. Miracles is a blank-slate superhero/saint/devil with unlimited potential and good will, and a tendency to get bogged down in mischief.

The original ‘edition’ of Doctor Mister Miracles’s Guide to Miracle-Making consisted of five similar but unique copies that I created by altering pages from a set of acupuncture manuals. My alterations include drawings and rubber-stamped text purporting to be a translation of the original Chinese into the occult, angelic language Enochian, and then from Enochian into English. On the surface, the manual gives advice on finding your ideal miracle stance, keeping your miracle centers unclogged, and other keys of miracle performance. At the same time it plays with ideas about the limits of translation and cultural appropriation.

The present edition of 100 copies was commercially printed from scans of my favorite version of each page.

2013
5.5” x 8.5”
20 pp.
saddle-stapled
ed. of 100
$16

Copies available in our shop

Googled English Frontier Star features thirty combinations of words that, at the time, brought back zero Google search results. I used Scrabble rules when creating the word combinations: no proper nouns, no foreign words that were not also commonly used in English, and no consulting a dictionary. I printed the resulting phrases with hand-set rubber-stamp type on a variety of decorative papers, and bound them onto a central cylinder using a binding structure that I invented for the project.

The structure consists of five signatures sewn onto a steel can with a single, continuous thread. The star shape represents the sublime, cosmic proportions the internet has reached—almost infinite and still expanding.

2008
4.25” x 3.25” x 25” (open)
30 pp.
cylinder binding
rubber-stamp type
ed. of 5

SOLD OUT