Libri
WORKS IN THE EXHIBITION
BETULA PENDULA- SILVER BIRCH
Nine graphite drawings.
(8’ x 20”)
Betula pendula—Latin. Genus Betula (birch), species pendula (silver)
VELIERIS- SKINS
Nine rice paper casts of fir log.
(8 x Various width 12” - 18”)
Velieris- Latin, “hide, fleece, skin”
TRABA- TIMBER
Nine milled planks from a vertical grain fir log.
(8 x Various width 12” - 18”)
Traba- Latin, “beam of wood, timber, tree trunk, ship, table”
FLOS CINIS- THE FLOWER TURNS TO DUST
Interior view.
Chamber containing drawings on rice paper in steel frames.
The drawing / plant pressings were created over the course of two years (12’ x 12’ x 12’)
Flos cinis- Latin, “the flower turns to dust”. This phrase was translated by Erasmus (Adagia, 1559), who takes the saying to signify “the fleetingness of human life. Youth flourishes today, tomorrow it will be in the grave.” And, according to the prophet, “all flesh is as the grass.”
ARTIST’S STATEMENT
Libri is a library of organic forms and their ghost images. Formally this work references an herbarium, a structure created to organize and preserve the temporal. In this exhibition, both the image of the destroyed object and the object itself are preserved and rendered museographic.
To accurately record the organic originals in this collection, the renderings were generated from rubbings of living plants. Paper casts were made of a felled fir tree and the planks result from milling the fir tree after the skins were cast. These rubbings are stains of the organic form. The casts are recordings of impressions of the living thing. Unlike taking a photograph, making a rubbing or a casting is to touch the object rather than merely to view it. Recording these objects by taking their direct impressions was done to preserve them before they decayed. Placing the original organic form in direct relationship to the image calls attention to its inevitable disappearance.
By mounting, encasing, and displaying these forms in an orderly format, I strive to elevate the common. To enshrine these ordinary forms, I drew from two 16th century German structures made to house nature’s bounty. The first is a 16th Century herbarium at the National Museum in München. It is a six-foot by six-foot oak wall cabinet. The shelving and glass doors positioned at two-foot increments create a grid. The cabinet contains hundreds of boxes made from the wood and the bark of a tree. Each box contains the blossom, the seed pod, the leaf, and branch of that same tree.
Some of these boxes sit closed on the shelves so one can read the Latin name given to the plant, while others stand open so one can see the organizational method and the organic forms in various stages of decay.
Libri was fabricated for The Douglas F. Cooley Memorial Art Gallery from 1995 thru 1997.
Installation view
Douglas F. Memorial Art Gallery 1997
Libri
Installation View
Betula pendula—Latin, “silver birch”
Nine graphite drawings.
(8’ x 20”)
Betula pendula—Latin. Genus Betula--birch. Species pendula--silver.
Velieris—Latin, “skins”
Nine rice paper casts of fir log.
(8’ x various widths (12”-18”)
Velieris—Latin, “hide, fleece, skin”
Traba---Latin, “timber”
Nine milled planks from a vertical grain fir log.
(8 x various widths (12”-18”)
Traba- Latin, “beam of wood, timber, tree trunk, ship, table”
Flos cinis
Interior View
Flos cinis—Latin, “the flower turns to dust”
Interior view.
Chamber containing drawings on rice paper in steel frames.
The drawing / plant pressings were created over the course of two years. Most of the plants were collected from my grandmother’s garden in Germany.
(12’ x 12’ x 12’)
Flos cinis- Latin, “the flower turns to dust”. This phrase was translated by Erasmus (Adagia, 1559), who takes the saying to signify “the fleetingness of human life. Youth flourishes today, tomorrow it will be in the grave.” And, according to the prophet, “all flesh is as the grass.”