Joan
I enjoyed making work for this month’s LAB theme, which was Deliquescence. It was a challenging subject but, in my view, it produced some of the best work the group has made.
What I had in my mind was the gradual decay and decline of plants, especially cut flowers, as they dry out and change form. I made three books from single sheets of paper (in paper covers). They were collages of photographs I had taken earlier in the year of tulips and peonies, changing in shape and colour as they gradually died. I cut the single sheets in various dimensions to represent the fact that things dry out and decay in an irregular fashion.
Patti
I wasn’t particularly keen on the biological interpretation of this topic, so I decided to take a different approach. I started thinking about absence, and the idea of something tangible gradually disappearing into water.
I settled on the word Gone. The backgrounds are reproductions of one of my Suminagashi prints, with the word Gone printed over them. As you turn the pages, the word gradually fades, followed by the background itself, until both disappear.
The book is Japanese stab-bound and printed on Yokomoto paper. I wanted to create a sense of gradual disappearance, rather than an abrupt ending – the feeling of something slowly being lost until it is no longer there.
