Artist Books
Two books on display at Nomad, Torrance Art Museum, Torrance, CA,
Memory Caches To Preserve What Is Being Lost
Inspired by dystopian science fiction and climate predictions, I have been making sculptural books as aide-mémoires - a French term that translates as an 'aid to memory'.
These are concertina books that can be folded and pocketed and kept to remind us of the unique experience of being in the natural spaces of this planet. They are ways of recording and evoking textures and atmospheres that are already being lost due to climate change. I imagine a future space traveler taking one with them to remind them of home.
Each double-page spread is a multilayered diorama of textures and shadow patterns. Like a message in a bottle to the future, these books are poems about light, texture, and shadow patterns made from many different processes of documentation - printmaking, photography, drawing and painting en-plein air, the foraging of textures, and materials from nature. Through these books, I explore the question, “How will we describe these surfaces and these transient delicate shifts in light and color when they are no longer there to be seen? What materials will we have available to describe them, what colors and unnatural intensities will we use to convey what is lost?”
This practice led me to create my socially-engaged Leaving Earth project, in which a book is being created entirely through public workshops and global artist collaborations. You can read more about the Leaving Earth project here.
