Shadow Canto One: Still Life, Handbound artist’s book with slipcase, pamphlet binding with gatefold structure, digital pigment print on Aya, 23.7 × 17.5 × 1 cm (closed dimensions), 2018. Edition of 15.
Shadow Canto One: Still Life, detail of slipcase and cover of book, slipcase constructed of stained Tyvek wrapped around eterno board.
Shadow Canto One: Still Life, detail of cover, 23.4 x 17 cm (page dimensions)
Shadow Canto One: Still Life, detail of title page, 23.4 x 34 cm (page spread)
Shadow Canto One: Still Life, detail of book opening demonstrating the gatefold structure
Shadow Canto One: Still Life, detail of spread one fully opened (23.4 x 68.5 cm)
Shadow Canto One: Still Life, detail of spread two fully opened (23.4 x 68.5 cm)
Shadow Canto One: Still Life, detail of spread three fully opened (23.4 x 68.5 cm)
Shadow Canto One: Still Life, partially opened structure detailing the independent pamphlets
Shadow Canto Two: Graffiti, hand bound artist’s book with slipcase, accordion binding with hard covers, digital pigment print on Aya (bird images) and Niyodo (music images), slipcase constructed of stained Tyvek wrapped around eterno boards, 23.7 × 16 × 1.4 cm (closed), 2018. Edition of 15.
Shadow Canto Two: Graffiti, detail of bird images expanded, 23.3 x 124.8 cm (expanded dimensions)
Shadow Canto Two: Graffiti, detail of bird image spread one, 23.3 x 31.2 cm (page spread)
Shadow Canto Two: Graffiti, detail of bird image spread two, 23.3 x 31.2 cm (page spread)
Shadow Canto Two: Graffiti, detail of bird image spread three, 23.3 x 31.2 cm (page spread)
Shadow Canto Two: Graffiti, detail of bird image spread four, 23.3 x 31.2 cm (page spread)
Shadow Canto Two: Graffiti, detail obverse cover
Shadow Canto Two: Graffiti, detail of music images expanded, 23.3 x 124.8 cm (expanded dimensions)
Shadow Canto Two: Graffiti, detail of front end pages
Shadow Canto Two: Graffiti, detail of music image, spread one, 23.3 x 31.2 cm (page spread)
Shadow Canto Two: Graffiti, detail of music image, spread two, 23.3 x 31.2 cm (page spread)
Shadow Canto Two: Graffiti, detail of music image, spread three, 23.3 x 31.2 cm (page spread)
Shadow Canto Two: Graffiti, detail of back end pages
Shadow: Incidental Music, 2019. Hand bound book work with image accordion suspended over text accordion. Images are digital pigment prints on Digital Aya, hand-set letterpress poem and blind embossed soundscape letterpress. Case bound with digital pigment print covers.
Dimensions: 23.7 × 15.9 × 1.1 cm (closed), 23.6 × 30 cm (page spread). View of closed piece.
Shadow: Incidental Music, 2019. Views of covers and foredge.
Shadow: Incidental Music, 2019. Detail of the image accordion suspended above the poem accordion.
Shadow: Incidental Music, 2019. Detail of the soundscape, embossed letterpress.
Shadow: Incidental Music, 2019. Expanded view of first half of the images.
Shadow: Incidental Music, 2019. Expanded view of the second half of the images.
Shadow: Incidental Music, 2019. Complete poem and soundscape.
Shadow: Travelogue, 2021, view of front cover, hand bound book work with hard covers and codex structure, closed dimension: 18.6 cm x 27 cm x 1.4 cm
Shadow: Travelogue, 2021, view of front end-sheet (left) and title page (right), digital pigment print on entrada and hand set letterpress on gampi open dimension: 18.3 cm x 53.4 cm
Shadow: Travelogue, 2021, view of title page from back and image on right
Shadow: Travelogue, 2021, view of Station One image and title, digital pigment print on aya (left) and handset letterpress on gampi (right), page dimensions: 18.3 cm x 26.7 cm, each page is folded at the foredge and glued to a concertina spine
Shadow: Travelogue, 2021, view of Station One poem, digital pigment print on aya (right), page dimensions: 18.3 cm x 26.7 cm
Shadow: Travelogue, 2021, view of Station one poem unfolded.
Shadow: Travelogue, 2021, view of first part of Station Two image and title, digital pigment print on aya (left) and handset letterpress on gampi (right), page dimensions: 18.3 cm x 26.7 cm
Shadow: Travelogue, 2021, view of second part of Station Two, digital pigment print on aya (right)
Shadow: Travelogue, 2021, view of Station Three image and title, digital pigment print on aya (left) and handset letterpress on gampi (right), page dimensions: 18.3 cm x 26.7 cm
Shadow: Travelogue, 2021, view of Station Four title and image, handset letterpress on gampi, (left) and digital pigment print on aya (right), page dimensions: 18.3 cm x 26.7 cm
Shadow: Travelogue, 2021, view of Station Five image and title, digital pigment print on aya (left) and handset letterpress on gampi (right), page dimensions: 18.3 cm x 26.7 cm
Shadow: Travelogue, 2021, view of Station Six title and image, handset letterpress on gampi, also includes titles for Stations Seven and Eight (left) and digital pigment print on aya (right), page dimensions: 18.3 cm x 26.7 cm
Shadow: Travelogue, 2021, view of Station Six image unfolding and revealing Station Seven image
Shadow: Travelogue, 2021, view of Stations Seven and Eight, titles and images, handset letterpress on gampi (left) and digital pigment print on aya (right), expanded spread dimension: 18.3 x 66.7 cm
Shadow: Travelogue, 2021, view of Station Nine image and title, digital pigment print on aya (left) and handset letterpress on gampi (right), folded paper birds tipped onto gampi, page dimensions: 18.3 cm x 26.7 cm
Shadow: Travelogue, 2021, view of Station Ten title and image, handset letterpress on gampi, (left) and digital pigment print on aya (right), page dimensions: 18.3 cm x 26.7 cm
Shadow: Travelogue, 2021, view of Station Eleven image, postcard insert and title, digital pigment print on aya (left and postcard on right) and handset letterpress (right), page dimensions: 18.3 cm x 26.7 cm
Shadow: Travelogue, 2021, view of Station Eleven, postcard has been turned over to reveal Station Eleven poem, handset letterpress on digital pigment print on aya (left) and handset letterpress on gampi (right)
Shadow: Travelogue, 2021, view of Station Twelve title and image, handset letterpress on gampi, (left) and digital pigment print on aya (right), page dimensions: 18.3 cm x 26.7 cm
Shadow: Travelogue, 2021, view of Station Thirteen image and title, digital pigment print on aya (left) and handset letterpress on gampi (right), page dimensions: 18.3 cm x 26.7 cm
Shadow: Travelogue, 2021, view of Station Fourteen title and image, handset letterpress on gampi, (left) and digital pigment print on aya (right), page dimensions: 18.3 cm x 26.7 cm
Shadow: Travelogue, 2021, view of sonnet, digital pigment print on aya (left)
Shadow: Travelogue, 2021, view of end pages
Shadow: Travelogue, 2021, view of back cover, digital pigment print on aya wrapped around eterno board
Shadow: Travelogue, 2021, detail of covers opened showing spine and image alignment
Shadow Quartet is an artist's book variation on the long poem format. Each of the four cantos is a discrete and distinct manifestation of the shadows cast within our domestic spaces and by our daily activities. The cantos are subtitled Still Life, Graffiti, Incidental Music and Travelogue and celebrate undervalued art genres. This reflects my longstanding attraction to the poetic potential of the overlooked and dismissed aspects of our daily lives. My previous work in Newfoundland centered on interpretations of my specific experience of my ninety-year-old home and the broader cultural phenomena of living in a mill town housing development. When I relocated to a new home in rural Ontario, my interest shifted to the potential for built structures to have both literal and metaphoric implications regarding themes of absence and presence and a focus on physical and psychological thresholds.
The first canto, Still Life, began when a cedar waxwing flew into a picture window and died. Avian fatalities are tragically common because of the excessive size of our windows. The emotional experience triggered a memory of the first canto from Vladimir Nabokov's Pale Fire, “I was the shadow of the waxwing slain by the false azure in the windowpane...” and the fictitious poet then proceeds to create imagery of the viewer seeing reflections and doublings of the interior and exterior spaces. Building on this literary source, my visual recording of the incident evolved into both an elegy and a musing on the nature of stilled lives. The poem is written from the bird's perspective. The sequence and structure of the still life images encourage the viewer to create their own pairings. The piece is a contemplation of images of interiority and the nature of the “still life” and the stilled life.
Graffiti is the second canto. Graffiti began with the discovery of a serial graffiti piece in an underpass in Rochester, NY. The artist was anonymous, but I would like to thank them for their piece. I was fascinated by the representation of a creature in flight locked into a static wall. My photographic record of this discovery was the starting point for the series of layered images presented in Imprint. While layering the images of the graffiti and actual birds, I was struck by the counterpoint of the images. This introduced a musical component to the piece. I studied piano but do not perform. In response to the interplay of images, I selected three piano pieces where the musical voices interact in a way that felt relevant. I scanned the musical notation and then condensed each piece into a single visual representation. These images were then printed out and transferred onto copper, creating a visual record or performance. The accordion structure allows two readings. The spreads can be experienced as individual images or the piece can be expanded and create a pseudo animation. The paper support becomes the architectural element, acting as the wall. Graffiti is about duets and an exploration of dualities. It is an attempt to make permanent records of fleeting instants; birds fly by, the murmur of musical notes fades away.
The third canto, Incidental Music, is about shifting visual and psychological states. Naturally occurring patterns of light and shadow create cyclical but transient intrusions into interior spaces. Sunlight progresses through the time and space of the pages with a brief shadow-play balancing-act performed mid-way through. The poem is a variation on the villanelle and cycles through psychological states. The soundscape evokes subtle movements in a space so quiet that you can hear the most minute sound. Each component of the piece, image, poems, soundscapes exists independently and plays out its own rhythmic logic and integrity; a visual, poetic and structural ostinati. The components complement each other by their shared manifestation of transitions. Incidental music bridges one scene to the next. In this piece, however, the interlude is the significant event; the condition of being the present. The past and future remain unknown.
Travelogue is the fourth and final canto of the Shadow Quartet. Whereas the first three cantos each had the catalyst of a specific event, discovery or phenomena, Travelogue is the result of my longstanding ambivalence towards travel. This is a travel monologue about two parallel and unavoidable journeys; the daily journey we take through the cycle of a day and the lifelong journey we embark upon from the point at which we gain awareness of our own mortality. I began working with this idea in 2019. The reality of COVID-19 lockdowns became a conducive context for focusing on this extended and challenging piece. Travelogue references the fourteen Stations of the Cross. I am an atheist and do not subscribe to any formal belief system, but I was raised within the Catholic religion. The fourteen stations lead the observant through key events of life's final journey, from knowledge of impending death to the resting stage. The occurrences along the way echo the struggles and conflicts most of us experience over the course of our lives. This piece integrates my images of household and house-like elements and my poetry into a codex structure. The format of the piece provides a relatively straightforward pairing of images and words, with some unfolding variations along the way. I have created my own title for each station to create a personal and secular contemplative experience. Each image is a stanza, each poem is a resting space. Interestingly, the term stanza has its root in the Italian for station. The words and images take a sinuous path through the unfolding page spreads and resolve in a sonnet about beginnings.
I am honoured to share two thoughtful discussions of this project that are available online.
Deborah Root has written the essay On Marlene MacCallum's Shadow, an evocative musing on transience and mortality. This appeared in the Impact Printmaking Journal, issue 4.
Robert Bolick has included my work in his valuable curation of artist's books and provides a fascinating interpretation of structure in his essay.
