This week has been all about the books – I haven't found any actual music books to work with yet so I decided to look through my bookshelves at home. I found that I was the owner of about a dozen very small books ranging from feng shui tips to motherhood poems. All were gifts but very bizarrely I don't remember receiving most of these or who bought me them, which is pretty awful.
Someone had thought about me when buying each book, choosing each particular one to match a phase in my life and yet i don't remember who. I don't even remember ever being very into feng shui.
I feel these books have sat neglected and unloved for too long and so I am now using them as maquettes and now I like them so much more. They have taken on new meaning and a new kind of beauty of their own.
If making art out of my own found objects can give me pleasure then maybe I am taking the right route with my work. Using other found and unloved books that can take on new life through art to give other people pleasure or even just to make them think – wonder at the history of the book, who once owned it, how often was it read, was the music of some special meaning to someone once? Why did it end up lost.
I'm glad that my slightly odd mini books are found again.
