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A Whole Megillah

To What End: The Whole Megillah

The evolution from a prayer to a bookwork was — typical of my life — fast, gradual, immediate, and impossibly slow. In July of 2022 (late-to-post-COVID-times) my son graduated from the University of Sussex, and I spent some time with an international branch of my family in the United Kingdom. His other mum lives about 40 minutes from Oxford, so I visited the Sensational Books exhibition at the Weston Library. While I had previously been obsessed with human olfaction, so beset by it that my thesis project from NYU’s ITP simulated computer navigation using one’s sense of smell. Surprisingly, it was not the wheel of book fragrances but the proprioception bookwork that hooked my imagination.

A mannequin was draped with a strip of paper. The interpretive text, written by co-curator Kathryn Rudy:

A wearable roll?
This nine-meter-long roll might have functioned as a home-made late-medieval cure. Someone inscribed protective words and hundreds of crosses on it in reddish ink. The object recalls instructions written in a book of cures: ‘Write these names on a piece of parchment that is long enough to go around the sick person’s neck, sewn into the sick person’s clothes. This is tried and true’. Someone may have wrapped the roll around an ailing person as a kind of body book.

Some months later, after a tour of Emory University Library (as part of the Guild’s pre-Standards seminar tours) I wandered through the Michael C. Carlos Museum and beheld another scroll/prayer. This one read:

Mummy Bandage with Hieratic Spell
Egypt. Third Intermediate Period. Dynasty 21, ca. 1075-945 BC.
Linen and ink.
From the New Kingdom on, mummies were occasionally wrapped in linen bandages with spells and sometimes images from the Book of the Dead.

Meanwhile, I had started to reckon with the clutter that I had dragged around the planet with me. My ticket stubs were uncommonly well organized (for me) in dated envelopes. These envelopes stood out among the books, cards, knick-knacks, furniture (one table purchased in 1991 (known as “the world”) and a few hand-carved African stools), countless boxes of art supplies, and general stuff. Somewhere along the road, I had decided that it would be a good idea to wallpaper a bathroom with these ticket stubs. Knowing that I would not likely move house again, the time had come! 

My home in Oakland does not have a spare bathroom for this project, so I eventually pivoted to the idea of creating a chronological scroll. My proficiency in photography has fallen off, so I hired Tom Hatton, a talented product/UX designer, to evenly light and photograph these ticket stubs. Tom’s attention to detail — absolutely necessary when dealing with hundreds of items — made this project possible. At one point, he calculated the width of the scroll based on the thickness of the paper and the length of the scroll. How thick would a 200-foot-long scroll be in the end? Tom calculated that and so much more; I am truly grateful for his precision, patience, and aesthetic.

Seth Dickerman, the soul behind San Francisco’s fine photography print shop, printed the files on Awagami kozo paper. The next step was to tear the strips of images into equal sizes so I could paste them into a continuous scroll. I spent a few evenings in 2023 at The San Francisco Center for the Book, which was the ideal place to find supportive people and plenty of space to work. I had procrastinated — I mean, worked on it — long enough and found the ideal deadline to see this project over the finish line.

Intent to enter forms for The Guild of Book Workers’ triennial exhibition, NIGHT CIRCUS, were due in October 2023. Before joining the strips together, I visited the C.V. Starr East Asian Library at UC Berkeley to examine how some early scrolls were joined. By the time the bookworks were due — May 2024 — I had commissioned bespoke spindles and a customized wooden box for this megillah. It was ready to ship just in time to make it to the jurors in Texas. 

NIGHT CIRCUS Artist Statement
I have stored and transported a clutter of ephemera for decades. After losing my parents in 2019 and 2020, the chaos of memory demanded order. I intended to wallpaper a bathroom with this collection of ticket stubs, but it proved impractical.
Each souvenir—from a 1978 production of Boy Meets Girl to William Kentridge’s 2022 lecture, To What End—represents the toils and joys of human creativity. This bookwork celebrates the innumerable creators of these events: virtuoso performers, costume designers, prop masters, lighting technicians, ushers, and all the artists and craftspeople who bring ideas to life.

Alas, the piece did not make the cut, but it came back unharmed, and I had time to spiff it up and re-roll it before driving it down to Long Beach CA, where the scroll is currently in an unjuried exhibition of the California Chapter of the Guild of Book Workers, The California Effect.  

My description for this show is brief.

The California Effect Artist Statement
I have stored and transported a clutter of ephemera for decades. After losing my parents in 2019 and 2020, the chaos of memory demanded order, so I chronologically ordered a lifetime of ticket stubs — from a 1978 production of Boy Meets Girl to William Kentridge’s 2022 lecture, To What End.