THIS PLACE - 2017

Linocut and Silkscreen artist book
image: Sample pages

The central theme explored in this book is place and how the presence and absence of those we care for ultimately give place it’s meaning. Glimpses of nostalgic visual narrative support the theme as the reader travels alongside the characters through landscape and internal thought. 

This Place is rendered in linoleum and silkscreen print along with collaborated text from close family and friends responding to a personal poem, Some Place. Some Place uses nature as a metaphor to blur the lines between mental and physical spaces.

By gathering responses from different people and collaborating them into a new work I believe that This Place retains aspects of it’s original form but edges closer to a domestic setting by focusing on the interpersonal connections of people and places. This Place speaks to its audience about the beauty, time, and tension in moments and memory. It lies on the thin boundaries between dream and reality and encourages readers to think about what makes a place memorable.

THIS PLACE

At the beginning,
I led and you followed.
Some place, no place, any place.

Together we walked hands clasped tight.
I’d never known another person like you,
so willing to walk beside me.

Tangible. Salient. Safely laid bare.

When I think of you, the glint and gleam fills space with light and blinds the eye in this place, emptiness and worse.

Later, you walk beside me.
Some place, no place, any place.

At times your silence louder than storm.
With veins worn deep and skin cracked, breathing this air of eternity. 

Look, the golden paths of time and body through dappled light and gloom.

There, somewhere hides a seam. 
Some place, any place, this place. 

Though our journey has led past various oceans and storms, and we’ve watched day break on thoughts that swarm, nothing enraptures like you.

I hope to remain, the earth under your traveled feet, the place you walk to a hundred times. 

In this place I will not die, just sleep under my paintings of memory. 
With none left to know my lips lay still,
surrounded by this place I call home.