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Just as traditional religious relics serve as tangible memorials to venerate saints, these "book relics" have been memorialized, for future generations, in a similar fashion. Each assemblage has been created inside old leather-bound books, bibles, or photo card albums from the early 1800s, and each one contains two relics: one being a fragment of the actual book, and the second, a relic from one of the characters from the book.
In addition, I'm excited to tell you that this is also the first time that I've incorporated hand-drawn imagery or text into the pieces. I added this element in honour of the lost art of traditional book-making, where every word and illustration was hand-crafted by artists.
It's been exciting to work in the studio again, and I hope you can join me this Friday, October 19, at 709 Penn Gallery. The opening reception runs from 6pm – 8pm, but the gallery will stay open until 11pm, to welcome "One Young World" participants.
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BOOK, curated by Sonja Sweterlitsch, is a result of her parents' house being stuck by lightning, reducing her father's extensive library of physics books to ashes. This devastating act of nature came at a time in our culture when digital books are outselling print books and bookstores are disappearing. Sweterlitsch reflects on the idea that books, as we currently know them, may soon become precious objects.
While artists continue to create “artists’ books” as art objects, the use of printed matter as an art material is increasingly popular. In BOOK, Sonja Sweterlitsch asks artists Seth Clark, Dana Ingham, Randie Snow and Brett Yasko to reflect on the material nature of books, and changes in the way we perceive and consume them.
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Here are images of the three new pieces:
1. ex calce sepulchri, D. (from the stone of the tomb, Dracula)
2. ex tela imbuta sanguine, R.D. (from the cloth imbued with the blood, Red Death)
3. ex carne, F. (from the skin, Fiend (Frankenstein))
