Date

2007

Edition Size

1

Media

Crayon, Graphite, Hand-painting, Rubbing

Paper

Beeholder Doublehand paper

Binding

Hand-sewn, Leather case, full

Format

Artist Book

Dimensions

15.75 × 9 in

Pages

22

Location

Brooklyn, NY

Publisher

Organik

$ 2,800.00

Unavailable


View Collectors

Sacramento Public Library

Process: A Book from a Cave is a collaborative project by Organik (Kurt Allerslev, Marshall Weber, and Christopher Wilde). In 2005 Organik took a stack of Wilde’s Beeholder Doublehand paper on a tour of Germany and Amsterdam collecting rubbings wherever and whenever possible. Back in New York, the group painted over and around the various rubbings. Then Weber took the stack to Australia and did another extensive layer of rubbings. The focus was on procuring rubbings from monuments and memorials with contentious histories. Back in the USA Wilde folded the pages in an aleatory procedure that collided various aesthetic structures and subject matters. He then bound the pages into an enigmatic leather binding with a scalloped opening that reveals the book interior from the front cover deep into the text block. The group then added various page activations and calligraphy in assorted media in a final series of layers which cohered the page spread composition and the oblique narrative.

Content: A Book from a Cave confronts the subject matter of the post-colonial 21st Century with a series of incantations (in Latin, English, symbolist, gibberish) designed to perplex and evoke. The book should be considered as a timeless manuscript of bewildering hexes and spells gathered from many spiritualist traditions and designed to act on the multi-national level. Focusing on the conflict between Palestine and Israel, the book intends to catalyze a shift of perspective in the context of that conflict using fragmented un-narrative and an integration of text and image reminiscent of various Islamic and Hebrew mystical calligraphic traditions.

Artist/Author background: Organik is a collaborative group that creates books, paintings, and installations in a unique, intimate, spontaneous, and passionate mode of choreographed artmaking.

Pages: 22, dimensions: 15 3/4 X 9 inches
Edition: unique
Media: wax crayon and graphite rubbing and drawing, aspiration and brush painting with hand-ground (blessed by Aboriginal elders and used with permission) Australian ochre (naturally occurring iron oxide mineral pigment), turmeric, curry powder, black pepper, and other media.
Paper: an entire haircut’s worth of C.K.W.’s hair acting as a genetic signature was embedded in the ion bonded pulp which was then made into double-couched handprint watermarked Beeholder Doublehand paper. The Beeholder Doublehand paper was made in Stevens Point, Wisconsin with master papermaker Jeff Morin.
Binding: hand-sewn tapes binding, full leather covers with copper plates on front upper corner and back cover, branded impressions on both covers and spine, application of molten metal alloy to covers and spine.