THE VOICE OF THE FOX AMONG THE REDWOODS
Poem by Angel Dominguez
Bookwork and images by Felicia Rice
The Voice of the Fox Among the Redwoods is an intergenerational conversation, a collaboration across artists, archives, and acres of time. It is a letter that Felicia came to in Angel’s Desgraciado (the collected letters) and one that found a new, revitalized life in this project. It reflects the durational resilience of the natural world as much as the rebellious resistance of colonization, wrestling with the passage and scale of time itself.
About the book : videos
About the poem : video
About the poet
About the artist
About the book structure and prints
About the binding
About the companion book
About the fine press edition $650
About the deluxe edition $750
To order
Events
About the book
//Dispatch from the Redwoods between us
/from Angel Dominguez
In many ways, The Voice of the Fox is a conversation in and around our present climate crisis, looking to the one of the oldest beings on earth (Sequoia sempervirens) as a temporal lens to think deeply on “the myths that trees make.” Each of these unique books represents a kind of diasporic bonsai redwood tree; the collected edition acts as a cathedral of redwoods that survives the old-growth giants of perhaps less catastrophic times. Each cover is bound in a memory of lichen, which grows only a millimeter or two per year, diligent and intentional in its continued growth and coloration.
The voice of the fox (forest spirit trickster sage) finds itself illuminated within sacred vermilion lines emulating and paying homage to the enduring codices of the Maya peoples. These few extant codices have survived colonization, and in the case of the Dresden Codex, a world war. Its accordion fold further evokes the codex form, fox flowing freely from cover through text and cosmic redwood heart—it’s the fox that brought all these luminous details into focus.
Working first from clay and ceramics, Felicia Rice’s visual translations of those fox talismans bridge the gap between mind’s eye and esoteric energies contained within the letter addressed to Diego, practicing a kind of energy transference with the fox’s final form pressed into the carefully selected materials. Every minute detail was talked through over phone and video and photo and text, and this work ultimately reflects a shared auspicious wonder at retaining hope amidst the atrocities of the world.
What ancient wisdom is activated when artists come together across time and space in a work that asks its reader(s) to consider “the speed at which our electrons rush to reach each other” in relation to the deep time of the redwood forest. The intentional experience of the book seeks to imbue in the reader a cohesive forest-centered experience beginning with mushroom-dyed yarn from the Miriam C. Rice archives that tie each book together, deepening the intergenerational conversation.
This hand-tied touch brings three artists together in community with the redwoods of Mendocino, Bonny Doon, California, and beyond. The voice of the fox carries these energies across the threshold of readership in somatic offering, asking that you “leave no trace” and be mindful of the human impact on these precious and ephemeral materials, made manifest by the consciousness of these artists.
This transmission was written while sitting below the redwoods of Bonny Doon, California, and I do sincerely hope you will care for The Voice of the Fox Among the Redwoods as you would care for one of these ancient, beautiful, and enduring teachers of the forest.
About the poem
The poem featured in The Voice of the Fox was selected by Felicia Rice from a series of untitled poems published in the collection, Desgraciado (the collected letters) by Nightboat Books in 2022. The poem was written near the end of the Desgraciado book writing process (which spanned some seven-odd years) and within the span of another MPP project, the Latinx/Chicanx/Poetx Broadside Series.
Angel’s letter is addressed to Fray Diego de Landa Calderón, the 16th century Spanish Franciscan friar who became bishop of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Yucatán. De Landa led his own perverse inquisition in which invaluable artifacts and codices containing knowledge of Maya religious, spiritual, and cultural life were destroyed by fire. The Voice of the Fox points to yet another attempt to eradicate a people and their civilization through the burning of knowledge as contained in books.
About the poet, Angel Dominguez
Angel Dominguez is a Latinx poet and artist of Yucatec Maya descent, born in Hollywood and raised in Van Nuys, CA by their immigrant family. They now live amongst the Santa Cruz Mountains in Bonny Doon, CA. Angel co-edited the MPP broadside series, Latinx | Chicanx | Poetx, with Hannah Kezema and Felicia Rice, completed between 2018 and 2024.
Angel is the author of Don’t Tell My Mother If They Kill Me (Nightboat, 2027), Desgraciado (the collected letters) (Nightboat, 2022), RoseSunWater (The Operating System, 2021) and Black Lavender Milk (Timeless, Infinite Light, 2015). They were the 2021 Mazza writer in residence for San Francisco State University and have shared their work across the country in various venues, universities, and states of consciousness. You can find Angel’s words online and in print in various publications including BOMB Magazine, The Berkeley Poetry Review, FENCE, Prolit Magazine, SFMOMA Open Space, and elsewhere.
About the artist, Felicia Rice
Felicia Rice is an artist, letterpress printer, publisher, and educator. In 1977 she set Moving Parts Press in motion. With one foot firmly planted in the 19th century and the other in the 21st, she utilizes letterpress and digital technologies to produce limited edition artists’ books, prints, and broadsides in collaboration with visual and performing artists, writers, and philosophers.
Work from the Press has been included in exhibitions from Mexico City to New York and Japan. Her books are held in library and museum collections worldwide and she has been the recipient of awards and grants from the NEA to the French Ministry of Culture. In December 2018 Rice was featured in the award-winning PBS Craft in America documentary series in their episode, “Visionaries.”
In 2027 the Press will enter its sixth decade, having been active for 50 years. Rice writes, “As a printer, my job is to confront complex issues and render my response to them in book form. As an artist, my job is to do so with profound integrity. As a publisher, my job is to make these issues public. As printers have done every decade since Gutenberg, I’m here to argue for a more just society.” The complete history of Moving Parts Press will be published by the Press in 2027.
About the book structure and prints
In the latter part of the 16th century, the Spanish colonials waged an all-out assault on the Maya’s culture, religion, spirituality, and writing system. Maya codices were burned in the hundreds at the very least, many at the order of Diego de Landa, the Spanish Franciscan bishop of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Yucatán. The Voice of the Fox is modeled on the four surviving Maya codices. In particular, the Dresden Codex (shown above) informs the accordion-fold structure, scale, and proportions of the book. The red outlines on each page delineate sacred space by calling attention to discrete bodies of information.
The front covers of The Voice of the Fox were laser-cut from MDF board drawn from a photograph of redwood bark, and green ink was applied with a brayer to depict lichen. Interior drawings were printed in black from photopolymer plates on green MDF board tint blocks. Red and yellow monoprints were produced with brayers; black bark graphics were printed from a laser-cut MDF plate. The back cover was relief printed on Japanese Yatsuo paper from the same MDF plate.
About the binding
The Voice of the Fox is the first limited edition artists’ book from Moving Parts Press to be bound by artist and printer Felicia Rice. The last eight MPP bindings were the work of master binder Craig Jensen. After 50 years in the field, Craig has retired and taken with him decades of experience and knowledge of book structure and housing construction, fine materials, and his masterful hand workmanship. Left to her own devices, Felicia consulted with Craig to design and execute a binding for The Voice of the Fox at her skills level. Apparently, this requires a lot of Yerba Mate cartons and bricks.
About the companion book, DESGRACIADO (the collected letters)
The Voice of the Fox is just one of a collection of epistolary poems addressed to Angel’s ancestral oppressor, Diego de Landa, a Spanish friar who burnt untold numbers of Mayan codices in an attempt to destroy the written Maya language and culture in Mani Yucatán in the 16th century. Desgraciado (the collected letters) is an epistolary unraveling of lived experience, employing a critical and tender language to exorcise and explore the material violence and generational trauma of colonization and systemic racism.
6″ x 8″
132 pp.
Also available for purchase from Nightboat Books
About the fine press edition
40 signed and numbered copies in portfolio flap enclosures
accompanied by the book, Desgraciado (the collected letters) by Angel Dominguez
Accordion-fold book with laser-cut covers, closed: 4 1/2″ x 8 7/8″ x 5/8″
Book fully extended: 51 5/8″
Paper portfolio flap enclosure: 4 5/8″ x 9″ x 7/8″
Typeset in manipulated Minion types and letterpress printed by Felicia Rice on Holcomb 100% Cotton Pearl White Art Board from photopolymer plates using a Universal 1 Vandercook proof press. Illustrated with drawings and monoprints printed from photopolymer plates made by Boxcar Press and Crown Flexo, and MDF board plates laser cut by Rice. Portfolio flap enclosures letterpress printed and hand cut by Rice using Gmund Les Naturals Olivine recycled paper and tied closed with wool yarn dyed with the pisolithus tinctorius mushroom.
Price: $650
About the deluxe edition
Five signed and lettered copies, A-E
accompanied by the book, Desgraciado (the collected letters) by Angel Dominguez and a signed relief print, “Among The Redwoods,” by Felicia Rice. One of 50 printed from laser-cut MDF board on Holcomb 100% Cotton Pearl White Art Board using brown ink made using unidentified polypore mushroom pigment, 11 1/4″ x 17 5/8″
Price: $750
To order
To order, please contact Felicia at frice@movingpartspress.com.
Events
Felicia and Angel will appear in Fort Bragg, San Francisco, and Santa Cruz in 2027, details to be determined.
movingpartspress.com/publications/the-voice-of-the-fox
From the CHICANX/LATINX SERIES Artists’ Books
Since 1989 this series has explored the intersection of cultures, disciplines, and book structures. These works by contemporary Chicanx/Latinx artists and writers in translation are issued in both limited and trade editions. They are the result of a close collaboration between the writers, artists, and the book artist Felicia Rice.