Public Story
Floating Petals - book
Handmade paper created from family photographs
Pigment prints on cotton rag, artist's book, box is 10"x10.75" when closed
In my series Floating Petals, I explore my unrequited longing for the refuge and freedom of imagination inherent in the place that I once called home. Like my set of paper sculptures, the accordion book is made of handmade paper created from a selection of family photographs taken within my childhood garden, combined with dried flowers and plant matter from my parents' present-day garden. Once shredded, the fragments of photographs were brought back together to take on new form. I found the process similar to the search for memories and the loss of detail as remembrance fades. The new paper looks like conglomerate rock, not dissimilar to what my precious memories, signified by the chosen photographs, have become after so many years of use. Together, with petals of new and old, I have created my own gardens to explore.
Poem on backside:
Photos of the garden fall away, some as petals, the rest as pulp. Stirring up the sediment now settled at the bottom, I shift the frame as if sifting for gold. First suspended, the shreds are then compressed in the mould. The garden as it was, as it is, in my now scattered mind. But I cannot find the piece I thought was there. Digging, darkly reaching, I am fishing for the fragment to fill in what is bare. Until there is nothing left in the basin. All together, they make a whole: new parchment with which I write my poem.
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