3 New Books Focus on Work of S.D. Artists : Publishing: ‘1492’ solidifies Debora Small’s accomplishment, her incisiveness and the wisdom and worthiness of her enterprise.

Three recently published books by local artists all pivot, coincidentally, on the closely linked themes of journeys, borders and the encounters that result from crossing them.

All three--”1492: What Is It Like To Be Discovered ?” by Deborah Small with Maggie Jaffe; Everett Gee Jackson’s “Four Trips to Antiquity” and “Border Art Workshop/Taller de Arte Fronterizo 1984-1991”--launch work made by San Diegans into a wider arena, in a more permanent but not necessarily more effective form than an exhibition in a art gallery. Both “1492” and the Border Art Workshop catalogue echo the non-narrative, mixed-media formats of their makers’ installations, while Jackson’s book adopts a more traditional, travel diary approach.

Of the three, Small and Jaffe’s “1492” is the most welcome, ground-breaking release. Small’s large-scale text/image installations have been shown in San Diego since the mid-1980s, and several have been accompanied by spiral-bound catalogues. “1492” solidifies Small’s accomplishment, her incisiveness and the wisdom and worthiness of her enterprise.

Small is a deprogrammer of sorts. Her projects attempt, through visual and verbal montage, to undermine the cults of heroism that aggrandize such problematic historical figures as Christopher Columbus and Father Junipero Serra. Like her installations, the book “1492” presents a fugue of voices and visions deftly interwoven to expose the contradictions and fallacies within the Eurocentric history traditionally taught in American schools. The arrogant voices of Spanish explorers rebound off the poignant accounts of exploited native Americans to spark revelations in the uninformed reader, or richly constructed affirmations in the more sophisticated.

The enemy here is, in Small’s words, “a society’s collective amnesia of its history.” But neither Small, acting director of UC San Diego’s Warren College Writing Program, nor Jaffe, a local poet, indulges in tirade or diatribe. The uncanny power of Small’s work resides in her strategy of evoking passion through dispassion. She uses irrefutable facts, records, definitions and documents far more than she does her own voice to tell of the torture, slavery and violence that Europeans introduced to the not-so-new “New World.”

Though not as graphically engaging as her installations, “1492” is an excellent vehicle for Small’s material. In the book, the texts and centuries-old engravings that detail both the sanitized and stark versions of history can seep in slowly, dissolving long-cherished myths of heroic deeds rather than violently dismantling them.

The implicit respect for native cultures that underlies Small and Jaffe’s book also serves as a foundation for Everett Gee Jackson’s, though history and politics play only minor roles in his publication. “Four Trips to Antiquity: Adventures of an Artist in Maya Ruined Cities” is a pleasant travel memoir, documenting Jackson’s four trips to sacred sites in Guatemala and Honduras from 1952 to 1978.

Jackson’s aesthetic agenda on these visits can be summed up quite simply: to discover the formal qualities of ancient Mayan sculpture, to determine the “unique abstract space order” of Mayan art. The artist, who taught at San Diego State University (then San Diego State College) from 1930 to 1963, traveled to several ancient cites, accompanied by either his wife, Eileen, or archeologist colleagues.

He made his first trip to produce illustrations for a new English translation of an ancient Mayan manuscript, and indeed, the black-and-white and color reproductions included here are primarily illustrational and straightforward images of Mayan stele and stone reliefs. A few studies are also reproduced, showing the “action lines” Jackson sensed upon viewing these works.

No deep philosophical musings can be mined in this, Jackson’s third such travel diary to be published. But Jackson’s anecdotes are as genuine as the art he comes to explore, and such terms as “picturesque natives” and “colorfully dressed Indians” carry little offense in this context. Jackson prefaces his book with a note of respect for both the ancient culture he documents and the living culture he inhabits, and this respect can be sensed throughout his visual and verbal observations.

Respect is also a key theme in the Border Art Workshop/Taller de Arte Fronterizo’s (BAW/TAF’s) new catalogue, subtitled “A Continuing Documentation of Seven Years of Interdisciplinary Art Projects Surrounding Issues of the U.S./Mexico Border.”

Since its inception in 1984, the workshop has proposed mutually respectful dialogue and collaboration to link residents of both sides of the border, rather than fences and more severe security measures to separate them. The vision of the bicultural artists who compose the ever-shifting workshop is an alternative, a viable and necessary alternative to the strategies of hate, racism and segregation that underlie current government policy concerning the border as well as much popular thought on the subject.

The new catalogue, produced in conjunction with BAW/TAF’s current show, “Destination L.A.” (at Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions through Feb. 9), is more a spotty, collective journal than a retrospective documentation of the group’s activities. Photographs, media images, letters, poems and other texts--from an abbreviated history of San Diego’s downtown art scene to a rap version of the Columbus myth debunked--all converge here but fail to cohere into a publication of great power.

BAW/TAF’s performances and installations have always achieved tremendous impact by relying on the sensory evocation of such feelings as alienation and oppression. Little of that power filters through in this catalogue, despite a few particularly poignant entries--”Delayed Crossings: Preguntas y Preocupaciones,” for instance. Most of the images and many of the texts lack sufficient context that would render them meaningful to readers beyond those already familiar with BAW/TAF’s work.

Though the issues confronted by the workshop are relevant to readers anywhere, in this form they don’t make the journey away from home very well.

“1492: What Is It Like To Be Discovered ?” by Deborah Small with Maggie Jaffe ($15.00, New York: Monthly Review Press) is available at ABC Books, the Blue Door bookstore and the San Diego Museum of Art.

“Four Trips to Antiquity” by Everett Gee Jackson ($22.95, San Diego State University Press) is available at John Cole’s bookstore, the San Diego Museum of Man, San Diego Museum of Art and directly from the San Diego State University Press (594-6220).

“Border Art Workshop/Taller de Arte Fronterizo 1984-1991” ($10.00, Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions) is available directly from LACE, 1804 Industrial St., Los Angeles CA 90021, (213)624-5650.