Words of Carrion Comfort
⊛ Words of Carrion Comfort
⊛ cut paper + washi + chiyogami / wood
⊛ 11.5 x 6.75 in • 290 x 172 mm
⊛ private collection
If there ever was an argument for spontaneous generation, it is the carrion-craving crow. The park near my home is infested with the big-beaked birds and they are eternally carrying out raids on the neighborhood garbage bags. But for all their ever-present...um, presence, I have yet to see a baby crow. As a boy I collected discarded robin's eggs, without ever finding the slightest evidence that crows hatch. Instead, they seem to come into the world fully formed and filthy.
My theory is that dark and ominous thoughts float out of our heads and congeal in the upper atmosphere. There they take on feathery form before plummeting back down to earth to caw annoyingly and take part time jobs as evil omens.
I've been combining cut paper and wood for awhile now, and I really dig the way the natural textures and colors work together. Lately I've been thinking about using different shapes and kinds of wood. This is one of the first experiments in that vein. Something about the rounded shape of the wood felt feminine to me so I've been exploring ways to get a softer effect from the hard-edged paper, mostly by way of color combinations.
Carrion Comfort is part of The Way of Flow running from December 4, 2009 - January 2, 2010 at C.A.V.E. Gallery, Venice, CA.