It took about a month to settle into my dept. and now I am making some work. There are about 4 different trains I am traveling on which is great and hopefully there will be more as I go along. Maybe it is better to say there about 4 cars on my train and hopefully more. So one of the idea cars is removing book titles. I find myself wandering libraries selecting books that look beautiful in there agedness and sometimes for their titles. So in these stacks I am tacking poignant children's book titles and eliminating all of the other titles in Photoshop. On side note, cloning book fabric is tedious.
I also have some drawings/tracings that I will stick up in the next few days. Another car. More images can be viewed on my flickr page.
This kind of reminds me of that scene in Eternal Sunshine when Jim Carey is talking to Kate Winslet at the bookstore and as their conversation continues, all of the text in the entire store disappears.
...but in a good way.
I forgot about that, i need to watch it again for a refresher. I wonder if it sunk right into my process...
Funny, I was talking with our friend Matt (Stu) the other day while helping him re-shelve all the books from their library, and I was telling him some of my emotional/mental-visual struggles with death lately and he said he feels death isn't natural.
Then I saw your book title. You need to talk to Stu, he'll set you straight.
(and thanks for your appreciative comment- I appreciate it!) (and the missing is mutual.)
thats was my first thought too when I read that. Death natural? not to sure.
How to keep this concise...? Couple things.
I like that the text on the book provokes. After all it is a children's science book about the natural world, however shift its context, isolate it, the words then proclaim somehow.
The proclaimation has a paradox for me and that is intellectually interesting. Death is extremely unnatural in some eternal sense which I have felt profoundly for sometime. I sense that I am made to live forever and an ending to my being seems completely unnatural.
However the odd paradox lies in the fact that death brings life to the earth in a complete, efficient and seemingly well designed system. In that sense death is natural, as integral to nature.
So to me there is paradox there and when gathering books that I wanted to isolate, this book's title hit a gutteral note that was worth study.
Maybe I should title the work, Death is Unnatural as to play with this dilemma.
"death brings life to the earth..." that's simple enough and an agreeable statement except, thinking of leaves falling and seed pods drying and blowing on the wind to sprout new plants, etc. -that's simple & agreeable, a beautiful process, even. But to think of a person, of the fullness of being human (thought & emotion, action & reaction, histories, etc.), to think of a person you've known your whole life and love very much, and to think of the decay of death overtaking them... it's no longer simple. And it's not beautiful in the way that red maple leaves are beautiful; maybe the only beauty in physical human death is love's strong appearance. And while I'm confident that one day the process of human death bringing resultant life will also be beautiful, right now that is hidden. In grieving we feel some sting of death. It's a strange mixture of sting and sadness, love and beauty.
I like that the text provokes, too. I wasn't meaning to suggest you re-work anything, just sharing the strange 'coincidence'. And sharing all that it provokes in me. (And so, clearly, it successfully provokes!)
I totally appreciate real reaction to the image and text. Of which I mention in my newest entry. I am looking for good friends to be on my critique train.
I am also thankful for regeneration in nature for it points towards that hope for human beings. But like you said Paula it is not simple and it is deeply hidden for the human race.