"Spine"
3”h x 15”w x 10”d, paper, charcoal, encaustic, aluminum, wood, latex paint
“Spine” is an open-ended book that preserves inspirational words from authors and artists that I have gathered over many years of my studio practice. Serving as residue of profound insight, these snippets of wisdom randomly rise to the surface of my consciousness within daydreams and times of reverie.
I performed a series of rituals in the creation of this piece: repetitive writing, cutting each leaf, dipping into beeswax, and threading onto the wire. I selected and edited various phrases at random from my notes and allowed juxtapositions to occur by chance. Honoring the painstaking labor of copying sacred texts by hand in ancient monasteries, I wrote each word onto parchment-colored paper.
Rather than transcribing the text in a beautiful, deliberate calligraphy, my personal script reflects my state of mind in the single moment I set charcoal to paper. Beeswax in the encaustic preserves the writing and permeates the paper with the scent of honey. I shaped the wire into an elongated “S” to follow the shape of the human spine.