from A Remembrance; Every Life is a Book;

Artist's statement:

As a nation we shared the heavy loss of civilian lives on September 11. We suffered grief for months as search and rescue teams continued to filter through the debris looking for the remains of the people who perished. I believe Mayor Giuliani expressed the magnitude of our loss in that every life, every person is a story. Every day more stories appeared in the newspapers with photographs of people missing. As an artist I searched for a way to express this. I have reproduced the image of a book

 

21 times in clay adding pages gently turning as if blown by the wind to reveal the story's progress. These stories were abruptly ended. These books have been burned as if censored. They tell a story illegible but symbolically of what has survived out of the ashes. –Marcia Selsor May, 2002

 

 

 

 

Marcia - thank you for sharing images and statement behind your installation. Very moving and an honorable remembrance. In the technical realm - are the top most pages (blowing, bending) the ones you formed while the lower page edges are carved? Or did you form each individual page and lay it into the binding? Very compelling as individual pieces and striking as a whole! Well done.

the books were formed in four different molds of books. then I added the thin pages and manipulated them.

These were smoke fired in the train kiln at the Archie Bray Foundation and exhibited in the warehouse gallery while I was a resident in 2002.