Gallery Route One artist member, Zea Morvitz, presents The Book and the Hourglass, an exhibit of altered books which considers how we attempt to record ourselves against the passage of time.
Each of these altered books plays on the idea of the discarded object. The ruined book with torn out pages, defaced texts, or the archaeological relic, the mystery and the treasure to be uncovered in the junk heap. These are partly accidental images, formed by stains and tears, fragments of a lost whole used now to convey an altered meaning. These are artist-made relics of the present as if they were already deep in the past.
Morvitz notes, “Library stacks were places of mystery where anything might be encountered. I still feel the same wonder towards physical books and enjoy investigating them in my studio.”
At present, Morvitz is still very much engaged in making large ink drawings, and her fascination with old books is ongoing. “I am constantly drawing in one small notebook or another and use these drawings to feed my book-making process. Also, without a conscious decision the image of the book and the image of the hourglass frequently turn up in my artwork. This exhibition is an excuse to look at these images side by side as a series.”
Walk Through
