posted by ![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
laramie at 10:36am on 27/04/2006
laramie at 10:36am on 27/04/2006Yesterday I spent a lot of time researching local galleries, and this morning I've drafted an Artist's Statement, in preparation for approaching them:
Bookmarks as Functional Art
These bookmarks are greatly varied in form and style; each is a unique work of art, with a character of its own. Some are simpler and more serviceable for daily use, some are lavish and better suited for use with books of special significance: favorite reference books, the family Bible, a classic volume of historic significance. Some styles are suitable to serve also as jewelry for the reader as well as for the book.
The Realm of the Senses honors the Realm of Ideas and Imagination.
Beads and semi-precious stones, in lovely colors and natural shapes, represent the treasures of the physical realm. Strung together one by one to form meaningful artistic wholes, these bookmarks echo the process of writing, in which each significant word is strung one by one, together to form meaningful thoughts, stories and ideas.
The role of the bookmark is to assist the reader in finding his or her place in the flow of ideas. It's a minor role, but a helpful one. To the mind that sees the material world as all-important, it may be humbling to see the Treasures of the Earth placed in such a position relative to the Realm of the Mind. And yet, as every reader knows, the best books are written with respect to the smallest and most humble aspects of material existence. It is this respect that merits in turn the best that the material world has to offer.
There is an element of Romance in this meeting of worlds. What more perfect match than that between the material and the ideal? Physical beauty transcends itself to create meaning, bringing itself to serve in the realm of ideas, laying itself in the doorway that is found in the open pages of a book. There it can remain as a link between ideas and sense, dangling, to be played with by the idle fingers of the reader until he or she is ready to turn again to the world of his or her own experience. Or, in the closed book, reminding the reader that all the riches of the world are still less than the riches to which the mind can ascend.
Bookmarks as Functional Art
These bookmarks are greatly varied in form and style; each is a unique work of art, with a character of its own. Some are simpler and more serviceable for daily use, some are lavish and better suited for use with books of special significance: favorite reference books, the family Bible, a classic volume of historic significance. Some styles are suitable to serve also as jewelry for the reader as well as for the book.
The Realm of the Senses honors the Realm of Ideas and Imagination.
Beads and semi-precious stones, in lovely colors and natural shapes, represent the treasures of the physical realm. Strung together one by one to form meaningful artistic wholes, these bookmarks echo the process of writing, in which each significant word is strung one by one, together to form meaningful thoughts, stories and ideas.
The role of the bookmark is to assist the reader in finding his or her place in the flow of ideas. It's a minor role, but a helpful one. To the mind that sees the material world as all-important, it may be humbling to see the Treasures of the Earth placed in such a position relative to the Realm of the Mind. And yet, as every reader knows, the best books are written with respect to the smallest and most humble aspects of material existence. It is this respect that merits in turn the best that the material world has to offer.
There is an element of Romance in this meeting of worlds. What more perfect match than that between the material and the ideal? Physical beauty transcends itself to create meaning, bringing itself to serve in the realm of ideas, laying itself in the doorway that is found in the open pages of a book. There it can remain as a link between ideas and sense, dangling, to be played with by the idle fingers of the reader until he or she is ready to turn again to the world of his or her own experience. Or, in the closed book, reminding the reader that all the riches of the world are still less than the riches to which the mind can ascend.
There are 2 comments on this entry. (Reply.)