Palimpsest

Altered book pages cut, layered, lacquered, and bound in a three-tiered accordion fold book.
One-of-a-kind
Closed: 6 x 9 x 7 in.
Open: 36 x 27 x 4 in.
2009

Alphabets are a preoccupation. My love of systems and also of words around which to create a book has drawn me to alphabets as one of those constructs. Palimpsest is designed around the alphabet along with a dictionary and a botanical instructional manual. Each panel begins with a word and its dictionary definition, a formal beginning. Two intepretations or responses to that meaning are distinguished by forms of writing: handwritten or typewritten or found text. Overlaid and underlaid are cut, collaged and then layered pages from an early 20th c book of botany with chapter titles such as “How Plants Grow.” The fragments of text explore the layering (palimpsestic) of experience and means of attempting to explain and make sense of our pasts; how we come to be where we are and who we seem to be as that past emerges. Physically, the layering of words and pages and light reflecting through works to visually illuminate the fluidity of time in memory.