Kathy Bruce is a visual artist based in Upstate New York and Argyll & Bute Scotland. She received an MFA from Yale University and a certificate from The Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts. Her work explores archetypal female forms within the context of poetry, literature and the natural environment. Bruce is the recipient of numerous awards including a Pollock-Krasner Foundation Fellowship, 2 Fulbright-Hayes scholar grants and a Ford Foundation Grant. She has exhibited her work in the UK, USA and internationally including Senegal, Taiwan, Denmark, Peru, France, and Canada.

These works are an investigation into structural systems in which I am studying the visual and metaphorical relationships between natural organisms and material culture. The blocks themselves represent the possibility to organise and reorganise these images that once collected, sorted, and classified, reveal their poetic substance.

Works on show include:

Block Boxes

The Return of Sherlock Holmes
I love working with images of “Shorthand” as a form of the written word. It has always been a mystery to me, both beautiful and intriguing. Even more mysterious is this old book I found in which this publisher printed 5 of Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes stories in shorthand. I have collaged all five stories in abbreviated form in 1-5 succession on 14 wooden blocks. Engraved in the advanced style of Pitman’s Shorthand. Box Set of 14 Collaged Mahogany Blocks, 2024.

The Colony Box
This work plays with a visual correlation between images and notions of the “colony” in nature, history and geographical locations. Recycled Vintage Books. Box Set of 9 collaged Mahogany Blocks, 2023.

The Photoreceptor Oculus Box
The word “Photoreceptor” (the light-detecting cells behind your eyes) originates from the two ancient Greek words that combined mean “Light Receivers”. They covert the light entering your eye and convert it into a form your brain transfers into vision. “Oculus” refers to a circular space flooded with natural light such as the eye or an architectural space. It also associated with the supernatural and the unknown. In this case, the collaged block Images “letting the light in” depict variations on light-receiving metaphors such as human vision, cameras, lenses, X-rays and technology which examine both the Surrealist concept of eyes wide open and wide shut. Pages from Recycled Vintage Books. Unique Box Set of 10 Collaged Pine Wood Blocks, 2025.

Prosthetic Block Collection
Trees have provided the raw material for transforming and providing new mobility to humans which is the subject I collected and present here collaged on wooden blocks. Following the Civil War in the United States (1861-1865) there was an emergence of Prosthetic Limb Manufacturers to treat the mangled and damaged bodies of soldiers ravaged by war as well as to assist those with genetic birth malformations. While the topic may seem a bit gruesome to some, my interest lies in the idea that these early prosthetic devices were fabricated from tree “limbs” transformed into human “limbs”. For example, a once live tree branch became a new artificial limb (branch) for a live person. Tree/Person = LIFE. Unique Sculpture in a box. 10 collaged blocks, Rag paper on pine wood blocks. Images from AA Marks 1903, “A Treatise on Artificial Limbs NYC”.

Instagram: @kat10bruce

Alastair R Noble
The first book I made was exactly fifty years ago; a series of loose leaf screenprinted sheets with layered images of handwritten texts extracted from my notebooks. Printed on parchment paper to look like ancient manuscripts encased in a hand-made hinged clamshell box. Needless to say, I have been engaged with the artist’s book for many years. Although my art practice has embraced multiple disciplines from environment installations to architectural/sculptural structures. However, the common thread throughout has been the re-presentation of language, texts and poetry.

Small scale printed works were set aside for installations and sculptures that presented literary texts on a human scale such as: Babble Babel; an installation alluding to The Library of Babel by Jorge Luis Borges. This was a labyrinthine sequence of octagonal chambers whose walls were printed with quotes from poets and writers. The poem The Brooklyn Bridge by the Russian poet Mayakovsky became the subject of a sculpture of five stainless steel screen panels 3.5 metre high that represented pages of the poem. The words themselves were replaced by black bands printed on the screens. These panels stood fanning out from its base installed underneath the Brooklyn Bridge in 2003. Blake Illuminated 2000: one metre high, looks like an open metal book but where the text lay on the pages slots replaced the words to enable the light to pass through. These slots supplanted the words of the first two pages of Blake’s Songs of Experience – The Introduction and the Earth’s Answer. This work I recently re-made on a small scale as an artist’s book with hand-cut paper pages.

I returned to small scale artists’ books in the past twenty years which reflected on mapping and environmental interventions they enabled me not only reflect on the landscape work but to explore the material in an alternative media. These landscape interventions were activated by another Borges narrative On the Exactitude of Science, which describes a community that produced map on the scale of 1:1. This was the catalyst for a number of projects for example: Mapping Arcadia – Isle Martin 2009. This entailed planting a growing contour map of the island on the island with 250 Rowan trees tracing out the contours of the small island. A year later at Dundee University I produced a limited edition boxed set MAPPING ARCADIA: Isle Martin and the Topography of Place 2010 that reflected on the project that included: a silkscreened accordion book with images and poetic text along with a published book with essays about the installation and assorted maps and items that were relevant to the work.

The most recent book I have produced this year 2026 is The Living Mountain-
A Tribute: an accordion book with six panels. Each panel has an image of layered multicoloured handwritten text flowing across the page forming interwoven random patterns transforming the words into calligraphic notations. These passages are extracted from Nan Shepherds’ book The Living Mountain. The images are a reduced copies from a series of 20 drawings/writings I produced five years ago that pay homage to this extraordinary poetic work. Hence my Tribute.

Instagram: @dunoon_moca_

arnoble.com
gnobilis-press.com
artitious.com/artist/alastair-r-noble

Visitor information:

This exhibition is open to the public Monday – Friday 9am-5pm. No booking needed. The library is on the first floor of B block.

*Please note the college will be closed for the holidays from Friday 3rd April – Tuesday 7th April inclusive.

The main lift to the first floor is currently under repair. If you need step free access please use the main (North) entrance by Costa coffee, take the glass lift on the right hand side of the foyer by stairs  and call the library desk on 0117 3284750 for someone to open the door for entrance to the library.

The nearest car parking for visiting UWE Bower Ashton campus is – public parking meters on main road or at Ashton Court.

For more information on Bower Ashton Library, visitor access and campus map, see the library website.

UWE Bristol, City Campus at Bower Ashton, Kennel Lodge Road, Bristol BS3 2JT.