12.5.08

archives




Ok, so I mentioned a few posts ago that I had worked w/ sculptural books awhile ago and that got me to thinking about this work and wanting to dig them out of their boxes to take another look at them. I did have a great time making these. I was, of course, looking at a lot of Joseph Cornell. It's hard not to be influenced by his work, if you're touching found images and text. He's the man!
What I loved about working this way was the process of letting the ideas and images reveal themselves as I worked from boxes and bags of images and texts and stacks of books, which I was constantly replenishing from free boxes, thrift stores or wherever they had been abandoned. There was something so nice about using abandoned material to create new imagery. Sometimes the ideas would reveal themselves on the floor, as I was sweeping up the scraps and realizing they needed to be used in some way. I have bags and bags of these scraps begging to be used.....somewhere.

2 comments:

Unknown said...

i understand what you are describing. this happens to me when i'm working, too. these pieces are lovely... i look forward to more of your archives

Unknown said...

This one made me smile- it reminded me of when I was so good at riflery (how on earth do you spell that?) in camp back in the day when they still gave campers rifles to shoot with!

Beautiful work, Elan. So delicate.