SPELLBOOK (2008-2010)
The idea for this body of work evolved slowly. It started with many images of my son’s toys and my thoughts about how children learn to process images and words in relation to objects that can be touched and through the sensations of color and sound.
At the same time I was photographing toys, I was also creating a series of image filled pages for what I imagined might become a recipe book of sorts. Pictures from art history, media and popular culture as well as bits from books on medicine and alchemy mixed with images of the things around me. I soon realized that the deconstructed parts of these pages were potentially more interesting than the pages themselves. I started to think about streams of 0's and 1's and cityscapes, about building blocks, bits and picture books in relation to perception, memory and identity.
On one level, SpellBook considers the role that language and visual imagery play in communication and how they figure in one’s understanding of self in relation to the world. It explores the idea of a book as a receptacle for knowledge and memory but also as an artifact, a repository for deconstructed marks that mean less than the form they take. It considers the translation of image to language and language to computer code. It also considers (picture) writing as a means of divination and its relation to myth, magic and religion. On another level, it explores cooking as a metaphor for making art, sifting my thoughts about science, religion, language, art and technology as they relate to both the terrain of our physical tangible existence and the often intangible and ephemeral nature of thought.
The images for Bits and Babel were created through a process of physical and digital layering of both original and appropriated images. The assembled images were then printed and coated with either resin or wax. The images of the animals were mounted to wood blocks and coated with acrylic polymer gloss medium.