TEXTBOOK
2007
mixed media
24 x 17 x 1.5cm
“Textbook” attempts to visualize the fact that the words “text” and “textile” have a common root: Latin textus means woven. A multitude of yarns is used to compose images and texts in terms of threads.
Each double page collects and “describes” a specific aspect of yarns such as their color, material or texture. The resulting inventory is held together by a title page and a table of contents. Some of the yarns have played an important role in my recent sculptural work.
"An ancient metaphor: thought is a thread, and the raconteur is a spinner of yarns -- but the true storyteller, the poet, is a weaver. The scribes made this old and audible abstraction into a new and visible fact. After long practice, their work took on such an even, flexible texture that they called the written page a textus, which means cloth."
Robert Bringhurst, "The Elements of Typographic Style"
A copy of Textbook can be viewed in the Special Collections of Artists' Books of Leeds University Library.
Here is a link to the catalogue record