Ephemerarium

Maccabee’s Candles (2012), about 10x 6×6 inches. Wax, wick, and book pages.

When prisoners passed through the gates of Nazi concentration camps past the motto Arbeit macht Frie (“work makes one free”), they must have understood that, of all the vile indignities that had brought them to this horrific place, this particular hell would be merciless. In this motto the executioners spoke with the omnipotent voice of Creation implying that whatever was to come was a foregone conclusion. Here the reality of Hell is the absence of reason.

Maccabee’s Candles was created using pages of an English translation of Hitler’s Mein Kampf (My Struggle) formed into candles. It is a gruesome piece that was not easy to make. Making the candles was similar to factory work albeit very short-term and, thankfully, the manufacture occurred in the quiet of my own choosing. Like many Jews, I hadn’t given Hitler’s text much attention. Knowing full well what came out of Nazi rhetoric as a whole, it seemed beside the point to read the actual text that fueled such insanity.

It should come as no surprise that Mein Kampf is, indeed, a Baroque and entirely neurotic piece of work, written in the exuberant and desperate style of a paranoid hypochondriac who, up to the publication in 1925/1926, had been victimized, not by Jews, but by his own ill-health, his doctor’s experimental treatments, his peers, and the systems (military, educational, romantic) in which he so desperately sought approval. It’s all there: hemorrhoids, stomach cramps, blindness, creative failure, father-son animosity, sexual inadequacy, drug addiction, and episodes that point to ongoing mental illness. Knowing how it all ended made the book all the more exhausting to get through. Slogging through black mud that business.

So, I read this absurd text and then I destroyed it. Or at least a chunk of it–it is huge and would make many, many more candles. I used an X-acto knife. Then I wrapped strips of text around a wax and wick core to create 44 Hanukkah candles. I know: this sort of symbolic transference is a little heavy-handed. But after reading the actual language that fueled the fire that destroyed most of Yiddish civilization in Europe and annihilated many millions of human beings, I needed to link the atrocity called Nazism that resulted from this book with some small triumph. One such story is Hanukkah.

Seen in this light, the candles beg the question: will we burn them?

Metamorphosis (Brick Pattern) (2011) 23×25″, book pages and string.

Here are two pieces using the text of Franz Kafka’s story, The Metamorphosis.  I started with a bilingual German/English edition (Schocken Books, 1968) so that I wouldn’t loose text on the verso of each page. Then I cut the text in to blocks and arranged them in geometric patterns.   These two examples use traditional parquet floor patterns as the basis for a depiction of Gregor Samsa’s nightmare.  Overlaid on the text-as-floor is another pattern made of white string.  It is really hard to see the string pattern in these photos (while the bottom piece is too yellow, you can see the thread more clearly).

The secondary pattern references the desperate, frantic, and mindless movements Gregor makes in his new reality as a bug in a scale that reflects his size and point of view scurrying across the floor or clinging to the crown molding, as his identity and will-to-be slowly collapses in the face of a macabre struggle. Fear and trembling meet sweet lemon floor wax.

Metamorphosis (Double Herringbone Pattern) (2011) 17X19″, book pages, gouache, and string.

Golem (2011) 46×31”, graphite and ink on book pages.

These two panels are joined together in a diptych based on the Jewish story of the Golem.  The Golem is a kind of magical creature–a superhuman thug really– molded from clay and animated into life by a rabbi with a supreme command of Jewish law and theology. While there are multiple variations, the most famous story is that of Rabbi Loew–the Maharal–of the medieval Prague ghetto. It is a story borne out of the Jews ongoing despair in the face of assaults and pogroms throughout history; from ancient Egypt into Europe during from the Middle Ages, and into … well, the 20th century. The idea is that the Golem can be put to use to protect the Jews and this happens with various levels of success and consequence.

I love this story because the Golem is brought to life with language: an inscription–sometimes on the forehead or on the chest–of the word truth written with the letters aleph-mem-tav.  When necessary,  the Golem can be de-animated by erasing the first letter, the aleph, with the letters mem-tav, or death,  remaining.  The poetic gist is that language is the foundation of all creation and has the power to give life or take it away.  (I cannot help but notice a parallel with the parental directive: use your words! Or, in the deconstructive context: utter.)

On one hand the Golem symbolizes the Jews’ humanity and will to be, but it also reflects the destructive forces inherent in taking the work of creation into one’s own hands. Golem is a protoMonster (per Frankenstein) and the tale is an existential story of sorts.  How can we be agents of our own making (our own survival) if we claim to have true faith in a greater order? But also consider: the Jewish god has no form and is without a body and so the Golem is both a divine life and an abomination.  This is a question fundamental to a Jewish framing of faith and how faith takes agency in the world, for better or worse.

Today’s post is uploaded with a wink.

The Poetry Cure (Celebration), 2011. Altered book.

This piece is a hand-held folly. I’d already butchered pages from this book for an earlier piece (The Poetry Cure, 2008) and had just the excellent cover and most of the text remaining. I am still exploring ways of altering books in such a way as to maintain the cover and shape of the original book object. I like the idea of pieces that fit compactly on a shelf and are admired only “on command.”

Celebration (2011) is constructed like a party ball: the circular shape is cut from the pages and then glued together alternating the dabs of glue so that the pages pull apart when opened: a disco ball for a poet.

The Red Line (2011) 10x6x6″, book mounted on board.

Simply folding the pages of this Bible resulted in an elegant, geometric form. The red line itself manifests from the visible leftover edge of the pages which are tinted red and bound in black leather. This Bible is a King James version published in 1896. It is what is called the Self-Pronouncing Edition which, sadly, does not mean that it reads itself.  Rather, this edition uses a pronunciation scheme for every proper noun, e.g. any mention of God is qualified by (gäd), and Jesus (ˈjēzəs) etc. It is astonishing that every iteration of a proper name includes pronunciation diacritics. You’d think that by the end of the first chapter, the reader would have a handle on how to say g-o-d.  No, this version is intended for the stubborn or dull-witted reader who needs constant–almost needling–guidance over the course of 1000 pages.

The title page is especially floral, and reads:

The Holy Bible, Containing the Old and New Testaments Translated out of the Original Tongues: and with the Former Translations Diligently Compared and Revised, by His Majesty’s Special Command. Appointed to be read in Churches. Oxford University Press American Branch, 1898. Cum Privilegio.

A few beautifully detailed and colored maps of the Holy Land were reproduced at the end, after Revelations. I cut out the maps before making this piece so I could use them in another project.  Amen.

Mirror Madonna (2011) 11×22″. Photo emulsion, pigment, and silver leaf on wax.

On my first trip to Turkey (1990), I collected various ephemera (newspaper clippings, phone cards, ticket stubs, coupons, receipts) during the course of travel.

Part of this impulse was fueled by the need to learn Turkish:  I figured that those little snippets of everyday life contained critical little snippets of everyday vocabulary! Another factor was the laden beauty of the things. At the time, phone cards were adorned with images of miniature paintings, Ottoman calligraphy, and other magnificent artifacts of Turkish history. I still have a fat envelope of favorites.

The photograph for the Mirror Madonna came from the newspaper Cumhuriyet. It was a bit mind-bending to look at a Turkish newspaper because every issue was full of examples epitomizing the hypocritical mainstream Turkish representation of women. A busty peroxide blond in German lederhosen (sort of, but less) invites you to visit the newest luxury condominium, or a blond Bunny in harem pants waits for your call on your new cell phone.

But Turkish women themselves–the majority of whom are neither blond nor comfortable being naked in public– were almost always victimized in some way. The mother of an imprisoned son. The daughters whose father ran away with a Danish tourist. Women kicked out of the Academy of Sciences for wearing a veil. Granted, I could only “read” the newspaper in an extremely limited way, but I understood those images of  Turkish women carried a double burden: victimized and exalted.

This particular image came from an article about a mining explosion in which several miners were killed. It is a portrait of a miner’s wife–now widowed–with her baby boy. Her expression–her longing and resignation–is timeless.

Chaperone (2010) 16×16 inches.  Encaustic and collage on board.

Chaperone is a composite of three individual portraits collaged together into a single panel and sealed in pigmented encaustic wax. The two adults are Rogier Clarisse and his wife,  Sara Breyll,  painted by Peter Paul Rubens (1577-1640) in 1611. Although Rubens painted these as separate portraits, I thought I’d put a spark into their union by allowing Sara’s hand to clasp Rogier’s. He looked to me like he needed a bit of affection.

The third portrait is an unnamed young “Lady” painted by Anthony van Dyck (1599-1641)  around 1620. I am not sure what it is about her expression exactly–mild embarrassment or self-consciousness perhaps–that made me think of the way children can be very conscious of their parents showing affection for each other.

But mostly, Chaperone is a composition of three Flemish ruffs, or starched collars, which I find amazing. Historically, ruffs were worn to convey social  status as they were very difficult to maintain. Rather than the frilly collar that was sewn into the neckline of a dress or doublet, the ruff kept the dress or doublet from being soiled by beard hairs, fibers, hat feathers, face powder, rouge,  dandruff, or whatever.

Visually, ruffs convey a sense of severity. The Flemish were both ruff fanatics and socially liberal-minded, so whatever rigidity I read into the ruff may be entirely misplaced.

Inferno (2010)  50 x 61 inches. Collage, ink and gold leaf on board.

This piece is a reconstruction of Dante Alighieri’s early 14th century Inferno using his lines of verse to create a text spiraling in all directions.

Inferno is the first portion of  The Divine Comedy, an epic poem written in three parts:  Inferno, Purgatory, and Paradise.  Each portion is divided into 33 cantos which describe a journey to godliness vis-a-vis a medieval worldview.  I’ve never read The Divine Comedy in Italian but, in translation, I remember it as a whirlwind romp featuring she-wolves, gloomy caves, and ripe figs.

For this collage, I cut the pages of verse into strips of 2-3 lines each. Then I applied gold leaf randomly to some of the strips and glued the whole mess into a giant, undulating, spiral. The nine circles are painted with white ink to create spirals within the spiral.

This particular volume of the Inferno was a bilingual edition with the original Italian on one side and a Catalan translation on the verso. This allowed me to use every line of the Italian version without “loosing” any lines.

The nine circles are not entirely predictable.  Lust, Gluttony, Fraud, and Avarice are straight out of Old Testament conceptions of a life aiming to avoid sin. Heresy seems to be a friendly wave across the piazza to a Papal powerhouse. But Sullenness and Betrayal seem to me to be very vernacular kind of sins; relative to specific cultural situations, or even specific age groups, like teenagers, political parties, or reading groups.

I find myself unnerved most by the circle of Limbo. Limbo is the ultimate Hell.

Here are two details:

This small piece, Manuscript I (2010) is made from silver leaf, wax, and collage. The tiny page from the Koran is a found object–no kidding. I found 2 loose pages on the sidewalk in San Francisco about 17 years ago. It was right around the time I was taking my first Arabic class from Nabilah Shehadeh at San Francisco State University. I was flabbergasted to find these pages (1  1/2 x 1 5/8 inches)  laying on the pavement like dry autumn leaves and have kept them in my wallet all these years.

These are 3 very small encaustic collages in a series called Domestic Madonnas. Each one is 5.25 X 7 inches on wood (2010).  The source images are from a catalog of early Flemish and Italian painters from the San Francisco Palace of Fine Arts. It was in the $1. bin at the Salvation Army Book Shop in downtown Eugene. The Flemish school makes me swoon.