Open Book is a reflection of two things; my love of anything old, the central vertical line that is prevalent in a lot of my work and books. I guess that’s three things.
I grew up with books, my Mom was / is an avid reader and since I can remember books have always been apart of my environment. It is hard to articulate what I find so fascinating about books. The story, the words bound into a container, compartmentalized, a world of it’s own bearing no external influences. Old books with their bumps and bruises, still around after all these years with their story still intact. Never changing. Solid and sure in their identity.
More often than not when I start a new body of work I become prolific. One thing leads to another, momentum builds and I couldn’t stop even if I wanted to.
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The pieces in Open Book are the actual size of a book. The book cover pieces where made from alpha mat mounted on to board. The spine was whetted and fastened over a form and left to dry. After which I applied encasutic and oil. Oh and I added some string to the spine to create the ridges. I carved in the text with a scribe and highlighted it with gold oil paint. You can’t see it in the image to the left but the “book cover” lifts just a bit around the edge to reveal a book page underneath.no images were found
Other pieces in the series take a more stylized approach where I emulate the interior of the book by using book pages and merge them with encasutic, oil and found objects. It is like old books meet old Victorian pealing wallpaper.My work gets stronger when it relates to like pieces. They feed off each other computationally and keeps the eye interested. I approach each piece as an individual work but like I said earlier; one thing leads to another as I explore a theme and all of a sudden a polyptych is born.
I am currently selling some of this work and donating the proceeds to girls’ education.
Please buy a book to support education for girls.