Week 10: Water from the Rocks

Well, I think this is my favorite piece that I have created as part of the Telling Stories. Honestly I wasn’t planning on creating this tenth piece until Lauren encouraged me to do so. I was just going to put a bunch of rocks on the altar; Amy was going to do something with a bowl of water; and then we’d be done. But I’m so glad I didn’t give up.

I created this piece as my first project for my Sculptural Book class at the Corcoran. I started a blog entry two weeks ago when I first started on the project. I had no idea what I was doing. Just cutting, cutting and more cutting. In that unfinished post, I have a link to an amazing book artist. Her work was my inspiration, so I must post it once I return to DC. Although, I have learned that if anything gets stuck in draft mode, it is likely to die there.

This art work is made out of The Encyclopedia of Religion, a book purged from the Calvary Library. It was published in 1945 and covers a whole host of topics spanning across all spectrums of religion. I sort of suspect that the same book today might not be so thorough, or wide sweeping. I loved seeing different topics as I cut them away.

This task of altering a book was hard for me to do and may literally break my father’s heart. I love to be thorough and provide all of the information available. In fact, it’s one of my strengths from the >Gallup Strengthsfinder book. But it probably also one of my weakness. Just look at most of my Flickr sets. I need to be more deligent and edit, edit, edit.

But I have a new familiarity with the book and love some of the small details. I opened the book open to the God entry, which was not only in the center of the book, but also the center of most of the encyclopedia’s entries. I also managed to salvage the text where it talks about creativity and God at the very edge of the page.

Finally, I love the look of the text-created pattern. Once I was finished, I realized it reminded me a lot of my grandpa’s stones. My Grandpa Merritt had a collection of Mt. Airy Granite. I don’t think we played with these rocks, but we certainly studied them. So it was nice to have that memory of him bubble up.

I had my critique on Thursday. It went well. My teacher and classmates gave me some great feedback. Plus Lynn pointed out that it was an altered altar book. Love it.