A History of…Volumes 1-3 & Appendix

Erasure text (from A History of Martha’s Vineyard, 1911), waxed pages, rebound in a hinged accordion binding.
One-of-a-kind
Open: 36 x 27 x 4 in.
Closed: 6 x 9 x 7 in.
2013 - Present

A History of… (Vol. 1 pictured here) is an ongoing set of books/volumes that consider place and belonging; how connection to a physical environment is part of what shapes how we grow and who we become. I have been going to Martha’s Vineyard Island off the coast of Massachusetts since before I was born. It is my ‘soul place’, resides in my bones. My siblings married in the town of Aquinnah on a bluff by an old 19th century inn (haunted) that served as a landing point for rum-runners during Prohibition. Martha’s Vineyard is home to the Wampanoag Tribe of Gay Head and the descendants of colonial settlers, ‘new’ settlers from the last century, and summer residents. There is stunningly ostentatious wealth amidst a determined rural and small-town culture, fish shacks and summer cottages: the wacky confluence that is a seasonal tourist destination. It faces the paradox of many a tourist economy, dependence on that which provides economic sustenance while it threatens environmental and community dissolution. A History of Martha’s Vineyard by Charles Banks was published in three volumes in 1911. It is a tomb. It carries the implied authority of tombs. And then, here and there, a real person telling a real story emerges...Sorrow at the already apparent degradation of the land and erosion of the cliffs and beaches. Regret for the disruption done to the Wampanoag Tribe and the resulting loss of the rhythms of life the natives practiced. A care for (misguided) missionaries, and for the fisheries and farms that sustained newcomers. 

Working with this three- volume history I write erasure texts that are vignettes of a perspective on the history of the island intertwined with my own story and attachment to the island. The vignettes are written by finding a new text that responds to and converses with the original content, placing it in a new context that questions its authority while also acknowledging the passion the author felt for his subject. The original text has been ‘erased’ by punching out each letter with a circle cutter or by slicing out sections of words. The pages have been removed from the original binding and waxed to create a transparency that reveals a trace of the opposite page. The pages have then been rebound in an accordion fold binding that can be extended allowing light to reflect through the holes, slices, and translucency of the pages.

When working with older existing books, I consider the nature of the original book including its ubiquity verses rarity, taking care not to ‘destroy’ a rare book, but rather to give new life and form to one of the many mass-produced books that might otherwise moulder in an attic, find itself on a remainder shelf, or just as likely, in a dumpster. On occasion, a dear book holding special meaning may be altered after finding a second copy to preserve in its original form. Such was the case with A History of Martha’s Vineyard.

An anthology of selected pages from the various volumes has been printed digitally in an open edition.