for The Sketchbook Project 3

History is broken down into countless pieces of fact. However, when it is woven together as a whole, does it often lose its truth?

Through an intervention with text, objects, and the traditional formats and trappings of contained knowledge, historical narratives become altered and contemporized. These historical documents are manipulated to the point where fact and fiction lines blur.  The new work acts as a catalyst for reevaluating the validity of traditional historical narratives by creating newer fictionalized histories, which highlight irrational or problematic ideologies long overlooked over time. Photographs interface with ink, forcing one to search through layers as they pursue the concept of identity.  Books become modern illuminated manuscripts through cover-to-cover revampings through painting, printmaking, bookbinding and digital manipulations.

The end products become museum-type, installations of categorized and encased books, photographs, paintings and ephemera that work together to create a falsified past. In some cases, the installation becomes viewer interactive making it possible to sit and “read” the books along with dossiers of related artifacts as if one was stepping into a scriptorium or library of a compulsive scribe or historian. It is with this ability to “read” the work, handle objects or study each under glass that information becomes reanimated.  What was once a cast-off allusion to the past becomes alive again but with new identity, rooted in modernity and footnoted by the past. 

Comments (9)

Michael Arnzen November 24, 2009

Your book presents a fantastic model, too, for The Fiction Project (featured on the front page of the site)!  Wonderful and inspiring.

 

michel demanche October 7, 2009

I like your work, thanks for becoming a friend.

 

Alicia Hunsicker June 24, 2009

 

Incredible work ~ Thanks for linking  ~ Alicia

 

 

sarahesther May 18, 2009

youre hot!!!

 

chicagodom May 9, 2009

We saw "Magnificent Obsession" when The Sketchbook Project first came through Chicago. My friends and I were enthralled and amazed! We kept passing it around, bringing it to newcomers: "Did you see THIS one?"

 

Last night at the Chicago Artsource Gallery opening we sought out your work and showed it to one of the gallery workers. She, in turn, showed it to an attendee who bought it!

 

I'm glad it found a home, as it is truly magnificent.

 

Theresa Lucero March 24, 2009

What a great title. Really neat images.

 

Luly Sosa March 4, 2009

Great work¡ I like the your porafolio's paints¡

 

JAZ321 March 2, 2009

i would like to play in the snow with you.

 

karlfrey February 17, 2009

I love the work.  It is about evocative as any I've ever seen.  Every object a tower of babel.

 

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