Submitted to International Exlibris, Sint-Niklaas, Belgium, 2009
Background:
As an English major at university, I took various papers for the love of words, story-telling and poetry; it forced me into reading and I was thankful for it. As an Art student, this interest extended to the appreciation of letterforms and books as tangible objects. To this day, books continue to comfort me, even if they remain on the shelf.
Although I am the faster reader, my partner is the reader of the house. She once described the acquisition of books as a means by which we define ourselves and fabricate possibility. Our choices in books, even if they are never read, show what we hope to become; The Illustrated Professional Woodworker supplying me with endless summer projects, A Land of Two Halves affirming our own questions surrounding the New Zealand psyche, Teach Yourself Spanish supplying me with the potential to someday converse.
Concept:
For this project I considered the the book as a companion and wrote a selection of prose that highlights a book’s tangible features; its portablity, ability to captivate, a thing which can spark self-reflection or offers momentary escapism.
Language is a means of translation, and it carries with it subtle cultural remains. These book plates, in my native language and her mother tongue, remind us of our shared admiration for the printed page.
A Personalised book plate is available on request, in rubber-stamp form.
