All That Remains and All That I Can Carry, Mixed Media, approximately 9”x 35”/23x89cms
Nomad, Torrance Art Museum, Torrance, CA, August 28th - 29th, 2021
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 what may one day be lost. I imagine a future space traveler taking one with them to remind them of home. Each double-page spread is a multilayered diorama which evokes 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?”
