Wild Muse Notes ♣ Aria Nadii’s Weblog

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[View photographs and read more →]

[View photographs and read more →]

Our latest release is Kittenhead. It’s another long form ambient recording from Djinnestan, a collaboration between me and C.P. McDill. This one is a little different from previous releases. It’s more whimsical. The recording also includes my odd little voice. C.P. gave me credit for the cover art just because he incorporates in Gaza. but he’s the one who did it. I love his cover art and this one is hilarious.

The placement of objects, the abundance of oddball artifacts, fragments and scraps, debris and detritus of all kinds is an important part of the process of art making. Where to put it all is a challenge though. I need everything in sight and at hand without being in the way or feeling too cluttered. The space didn’t lend itself to flow and movement in it’s previous incarnation.

We’ve been working on it all winter. C.P. is responsible for making such a truly tiny space look and feel so spacious and full of light. He’s so good. The room is 12′ x 15′ which is about a quarter of the size of my old studio and our cottage has no storage. We plan to remove the ridiculously low drop ceiling. It won’t make the room much higher, not even enough for C.P. to stand up straight, but it will feel less cramped with cross beams exposed…and I can then hang thingies from them.

“We can no longer physically read the book, so in that way it is made redundant; and yet on another level it has taken on a new life and is telling a different story.”

This is from the artist statement for Su Blackwell. These are called book cut sculptures. I found the link through Blue Tea and I’ve never seen anything like them. It was fascinating to read Su Blackwell’s description of her process and how it relates to my own work with books and manuscripts, even though our results are so different. It’s nice to find another book pirate who loves the alchemical transformation of pages into artifacts as much as I do. She also uses mythic and storybook themes in her work.

“The wear on my books, as physical objects, holds their history and makes my relationship with their contents immediate and visceral. The books I carry when I travel get stained and frayed, and the damage tells a story. I love second-hand books that have been marked up with pencil because I can see what was important to the person who read it before me.”