Curators note: Attempts is what happens when a radical feminist, mystic eco-spiritualist, expressionist painter takes on Tom Phillips’ “Humument” project; I mean this in a completely imaginary art historical way of course because Kowalski’s work goes far beyond Phillip’s rather dispassionate graphic design interventions. But it does place Kowalski’s practice in the forefront of painted, altered book practice and history, where her work provides a surprising and evocative counter-point to the primarily male identified ‘book surgery’ practice predominant in the altered book world. Kowalski’s work is more in line with Carletta Wilson Carrington, Clarissa Sligh, and Rachel Simmons, artists whose books often critically interrogate social constructions of identity and community. – M. Weber

Attempts is a life raft, a moment of divine intervention. During times of complex trauma and sudden or unfathomable loss, the ego-mind cannot reckon with the cleaving that has happened between the life/identity of Before and the life/identity it cannot yet understand may constitute some form of After, ongoingness. During dark nights of the soul, when nothing rational can hold the vastness of our pain, we trust fall. We let go, into something akin to faith. This book is a journey, a path through the darkness, the kind we only make by walking.

Attempts is a hand-painted re-imagining of the book Suicide (Social Issues Firsthand), published in 2005 by David M. Haugen. Originally a book written for clinicians about working with suicidal patients and their families, Suicide (Social Issues Firsthand) contained a number of first-hand stories and suicide notes. One way to contemplate suicidal ideation is that perhaps the True Self, or soul, will at times find the circumstances of its external life/identity so intolerably out of sync with its innermost knowings that it is begging for That Life (that ego) to die. This book is an excruciating but tender voyage through one such period.

Within the found text, Sarah Kowalski carved out a story she had been unable to write in her own words. Though it moves through pain and darkness, the book opens into grace, and ends on a note of hope: the flame burning bright. The life force in the human heart that yearns to heal, to be reborn, to continue.

Attempts is painted in gouache, ink, wax medium, and natural pigments, including hematite and yellow ochre. Although its pages have been sealed with fixative, hints of pigment may leave traces on fingertips: an echo of the truth that we are changed by anything we truly touch. A new cover and binding were made by Kurt Allerslev, combining one of Kowalski’s hematite paintings for the covers and palm tree bark for the spine. Sophia Kramer crafted a custom book box, utilizing one of Kowalski’s paintings.