Ocellus.
Self-published, 2007. Item #3098 9 3/8 x 11 1/2 in. handmade clamshell box, containing leather-bound book with hand-tooled and handmade covers and gold-painted fore-edge. The book is 8 hand-drawn leaves with ink, and gold-stamped cover sheet and handpainted endpapers, as described by the artist: I am interested in seventeenth- to nineteenth-century science books—actually, most all books that attempt explanation and use delineations to aid in the disclosure of the invisible. Many of the books that inspire me are bound and adorned with ornament, usually rendered in gold leaf on leather. Even as the science became material and the romance of ornament fell away, many of the books, as well as telescopes and microscopes, were tooled up the same way as most books. This is how these early tools of science were made. There was still a fusion of art and science. These books inspire me—OCELLUS is also rendered in gold. The surface treatment is irregular, smooth leathers not used here, the gold is more rustic. The surface is covered with thin shards of goatskin. These were adhered to Japanese paper and dyed. These new pieces of laminated fragments were pressed, polished, waxed, and installed on the boards of the book much like a quilt maker or any other 'piece' maker would go about it. Once the installation was complete and the counter-warping of the boards was compensated for, the tooling began. As I like the risk of tooling on a completed book, most of this happened after the boards were installed. As I tool with a certain amount of spontaneity, having the boards in place helps feed the design orientation. The book was completed in Colfax, Washington in 2007 and is housed in a custom box." Very fine condition.
"OCELLUS—2007—a difficult book—I designed grid paper in the 80’s and it is a very strong surface visually on which to work—I find that a figure-ground balance is critical in all discerning visual phenomenon and when that is veiled by an extraordinary dense field [making up the ground] it makes the primary motif of the communication more challenging to draft and apprehend. My solution is to obscure the ground color [light tan] and the grid [sepia] with similar tones of a broken 'antiquated' passage from the so-called warm area of the color circle. This more subdued surface is then easier to articulate. It always amazes me how working on an undifferentiated universe is easier, how the pen moves without the restrictions of the dark grid.
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