Ceramics, First-Year Graduate Student
Treating the heart as a symbol, this book is made as a box for two heart-shaped ceramic bowls. The pages are made with heart-like cutouts into which the bowls fit when closed, and that also serve as decorative elements repeating the theme. The book is made of four-ply two-colored illustration board and adhesive-bound together with the covers. Covers include a clasp which securely holds the book shut to prevent the bowls from falling out. This book incorporates three-dimensional objects, in this case ceramic bowls. It functions as a box and at the same time as a book about a heart.
This work was inspired structurally by Tatana Kellner's work 71125, Fifty Years of Silence: Eva Kellner's Story, and Thorsten Dennerline's (MFA, 1997) Lille Fedtøre/Little Airhead. Both of these incorporate sculptural elements into the structure of the book. In Kellner's case it is a papier-mâché cast of her mother's arm, and in Dennerline's case, a resin cast of an ear.
71125, Fifty Years of Silence: Eva Kellner's Story by Tana Kellner
One of two volumes preserving the author's parent's memory of internment in several concentration and extermination camps during World War II. Handwritten Czech text, transcribed into English by the author, is printed over contemporary and historical photographic images from concentration camps. The original manuscript is reproduced on transparent interleaved pages. Family photographs provide a poignant contrast to these horrific accounts. Die cut pages fall around a flesh colored, handmade paper cast of Eva Kellner's forearm, tattooed with its ineradicable number.