Spectral Evidence: The Witch Box

By Elizabeth Willis

Art by Nancy Bowen

$450.00

Spectral Evidence: The Witch Box is a limited-edition artists’ book produced in an edition of 26 numbered and signed copies. Each boxed set contains 46 silkscreen printed cards at 5″ x 6.5″ with images by Nancy Bowen and texts by Elizabeth Willis, as well as a silkscreen printed Evolon wrapper, a glazed ceramic object by Nancy Bowen, and a pamphlet containing an afterword by the authors and Litmus editor E. Tracy Grinnell, all housed in a vintage cigar box. Spectral Evidence: The Witch Box was printed and assembled at Shoestring Press by Master Printer Lane Sell and Nancy Bowen, with Erich Erving, Merisa Skinner, and May Hernandez.

Spectral Evidence is the result of a meeting between Elizabeth Willis, descendent of one of the convicted and executed “witches” of the Salem witch trials, and Nancy Bowen, descendent of Samuel Sewall, a prominent judge in the trials. Spectral Evidence pairs each of the 46 stanzas of Willis’s “The Witch Poem” with a drawing or collage by Bowen, whose iconographic style moves deftly between humor and seriousness, echoing the affective range of Willis’s poem: “With a glance, she will make rancid the fresh butter of her righteous neighbor.” / “A witch may cry out sharply at the sight of a known criminal dying of thirst.”

For more information on the trade edition, visit our page for Spectral Evidence: The Witch Book.