Beckoning

I just completed three copies of Beckoning, a long-term book project in which I focused on working with the paper itself to create the content. The paper is all handmade from combinations of abaca, flax, and denim. The book is about gravitational force, both in the physical, literal sense of the moon pulling at the earth’s oceans to generate tides, and in the psychological phenomenon of being drawn to the moon and to the sea. My goal was to capture some of the visual and aural qualities that compel us toward these two in the luminosity and subtle whispering sounds of the materials.

The book is divided into two sections, the first of which is introduced by a quote from Rachel Carson’s The Edge of the Sea:

     The tides address the sense of hearing, speaking a language of 

     their own distinct from the voice of the surf.

This section, titled Overture: Susurrous, consists of delicate “blank” pages that rustle as they are turned, summoning the murmuring sounds of the sea. The thin, translucent sheets progress through a gradient of color, beginning with a deep indigo, fading through light blue, and ending with unpigmented. A reflection on the falling tide, this prelude sets the stage for the rest of the book.

In the second section, Pull and Beckon, imagery was created mainly with paper pulp, and in some cases with sand, thread, or hair that was embedded in the sheets as the paper was made. I wanted the viewer to move through the layers – or to be pulled through – to discover how the composition of each spread is defined by what appears on the surface of the pages, within the pages, and behind the pages. The translucency of the paper gives an ambiguity of depth that I enjoy manipulating into an unusual “reading” experience.

 

There is very little text aside from the section titles. The final pages before the colophon contain the poem Nace ("It is Born"), by Pablo Neruda, first in the original Spanish, letterpress-printed on translucent abaca, with the English translation visible and offset on the page behind it.

This will ultimately be a variable edition of four. Since my subject is the expanse of the sea and the firmament, I used a large landscape format (measuring 36” wide x 12.25” tall when open). The binding is a Japanese-stab style, with plexiglass laminated in handmade paper for the covers to carry the theme of translucency throughout.

It is Born 

Here I came to the very edge
where nothing at all needs saying,
everything is absorbed through weather and the sea,
and the moon swam back,
its rays all silvered,
and time and again the darkness would be broken
by the crash of a wave,
and every day on the balcony of the sea,
wings open, fire is born,
and everything is blue again like morning.


Nace

Yo aquí vine a los límites
en donde no hay que decir nada,
todo se aprende con tiempo y océano,
y volvía la luna,
sus líneas plateadas
y cada vez se rompía la sombra
con un golpe de ola
y cada día en el balcón del mar
abre las alas, nace el fuego
y todo sigue azul como mañana

-Pablo Neruda