these five words
Diarized interactions and personal reflections on the topic of dementia. Self-portraiture, landscapes on film, and still-life photography connect with text and handwriting to explain the closeness to dementia and the emotions attached.
Loss, memories, and anxiety are touched on in this work through written thoughts and questions. In Writing as Practice: Peripheral Continuity, artist Zoe Leonard highlights that design and formatting can be as important as what the words say (86). Repetition is used in the text of these five words to emphasize anxiety and attempt to hold on to the past and the present. Gradient fading of ink is used throughout to allude to experiences with the passage of time and loss of memory.
Photography is similar to 'text as subjective truth' in that images give clues, but do not give all the information (99). The space between image and text is “where all the interesting things happen” (99). I made photography for this artist book that would provide visual metaphors for the complex topics of loss, health and illness and associated feelings of emptiness and fear. Text was required to accompany these images in order to express my perspective and history with dementia that photography would not capture alone.
Jagarjian, Michi & Libby Pratt. Writing as Practice: Peripheral Continuity. Secretary Press, 2012, New York.
book size: 8.5" x 5.5"
Riso printed with aqua and fluorescent orange, 5 different covers, hand bound and sewn with both aqua and gold tinsel thread, 1st edition, 24 pages, 75 copies.
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Climate Anxiety: A Retrospective + Constructed Landscape
A Retrospective
Inside the walls of this house are collaged photos taken by me in November 2019 at “Waste Land: A Climate Anxiety Haunted House” at 2566 Fifth St. in Victoria. A climate conversation/experimental art space in a pre-demolition house; an art experience organized and created by Victoria artists and students. Black glue reminiscent of oil spills holds these ripped up images together inside the book.
Constructed Landscape
Outside the walls: a montage of close up photos of aquatic environments along the coast of vancouver island on Pacheedaht First Nation territory. These images were reassembled and transformed into a 3D space using basic printer paper, re-photographed and printed on quality photo paper. The collage work includes these new images along with the original fragments to expand the environment, a work in progress since August 2022. A hint of futurism, a remix of earth inspired by 1980’s sci-fi. This futurism composition could be called Phaeacia, a theoretical epilogue to Boat of a Million Years, a book by Poul Anderson (1989).
Number of items: 3 (book + box + card/descriptor in box)
Box size: 32.5” x 9” x 1.25”H
Book size when open for display: 16.5” x 16.5” x 22.5”H
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Andream
A collection of self-portraits
