| Description |
The images in HOURS were made from 4 x 4 inch photograms, cyanotypes of found things-plants and discarded objects. Its poems were drawn from daily experience-fragments of conversation, passages from books, thoughts on time, memory, existence, presence. Together, the images and text reflect concerns similar to traditional books of hours wherein the act of reading is also the act of seeing. This artist' s book contains 22 folios of text paired with 28 blue images opposite twenty squares of blue text. The 4 x 4 inch fields of text were created using photopolymer plates. The images were scanned from 4 x 4 inch cyanotypes. These were letterpress and digitally printed on 12 x 18 inch sheets of Frankfurt paper. The serifed typeface, Alexandria FLF, makes more readable a text that tends towards disorientation arising from an absence of capitals, an unusual use of the colon, and a confusion of time-the past with the present-and space-the speaker's with the mother's. T ext and image appear in regular intervals to reference both time as measured by clocks and calendars in minutes, hours, days, weeks, months, and years, and time as measured by the sun, moon, and seasons. Blind impressions cross the gutter and bleed of f the page, as counterpoint to what is otherwise contained and regular, to reference what cannot be contained, that is, experience and memory. The book is bound with natural linen thread using a braid-like pattern, called "French-web," and enclosed by a translucent cover made of an imitation parchment, called "Pergamenta." Many of these formal decisions reference Les Tres Riches Heures du Duc de Berry, a famous medieval illuminated manuscript, wherein 131 illustrations accompany various texts, such as prayers, gospels, psalms, and masses. And, much like Dutch book artist Herman de Vries in his own les très riches heures de herman de vries d'après Les Très Riches Heures du Duc de Berry-131 black and white photographs all taken in a single day of meditation-I too have played with elements common to traditional books of hours-miniature, richness, time, representation, and the individual. ABSTRACT |
