Books
'Compendium'
Assemblage books
I love books. I like not only the words or the images I find in them but also their particular shape: the way they open, the cover, the binding, the paper, the smell. I find all the material I use for my books as I walk in the woods around my house. Almost every day I collect a group of objects from the path. I like most of all those that show the effects of the weather and the elements, the intervention of insects and animals : sticks smoothed by the wind and the rain, a twig gnawed at by wild boar, the deep blacks of leaves on the point of rotting away. And if you choose the right moment to pick up that leaf or that stick, you may stop the passage of time and create a poem or a story just by placing these objects on a page of wood or metal: the group of objects that you have chosen on that day dance together on the page.
The Book of Fire is about the heat of the sun imprisoned in the forms of trees and plants: the fiery energy revealed in the way they grow and move, or in the intensity of certain colours. There is fire even in a green blade of grass. Fire soon burns out but leaves ashes that re-enter the growing cycle and feed new plant growth. So for me fire represents not only our passions and energies but also regeneration. I work with clay and terracotta so fire is potent and creative: clay passes through fire in order to be transformed and completed. I included spent gun cartridges and the remains of the farmers’ bonfires because the red of fire is also associated with killing and blood, and with the ancient rites and traditions that try to contain and give meaning to the cycles of rebirth of the countryside.