Ann Isik Artist & Writer
Gallery III
The Books of the Dead
(A Reclamation of Creativity)
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Most of the original pages in the sketchbook sent to me by Art House Co-op have been replaced. Some now consist of images printed onto acid free tissue paper. Others are collages of drawings/paintings/photos. Some images were printed onto transparent acetate, then scanned and re-printed onto tissue or thicker paper. It's an altered book, a handmade journal, a group of collages. A book of memories. A memoir.
Some - the gold pages - are from a rescue blanket gifted to me by the Paris Croix Rouge (French/Paris Red Cross) when I was living in France and a subscribing member as a soprano with the Choeur Croix Rouge. I didn't tear up the rescue blanket for the sketchbook! I had already mistakenly used some of it as Christmas wrapping paper. (I did think it was a bit thin)!
By accident, by mistake, my sketchbook's a rescue manual.
Check out the video of my artwork (above). The beautiful and enigmatic music is Everyone's Walking My Dog from the album Mysterevolution by Rob Stevens. You can purchase this or take a look at his other published music via the Amazon link at the top of the page and to the left.
Containing the word dead, the title of my project was likely to come across as a negative construct, a bit of a turn-off. Though dead is close enough to undead to have triggered a round of applause from zombie enthusiasts. The Books of the Dead however are about creative recovery. The idea came about when sifting through material to use for the project. I saw that many of my travels have been punctuated by assorted deaths and varied tragedies.
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I wasn't able to develop these further because a drawing, a photo, a scribbled note, was a painful trigger of emotional and physical trauma, resulting in the equation:
creativity = trauma
Wrong! Thus, Travel With Me became also, The Books of the Dead: Book One. It marks the beginning of a walk of reclamation of all the creativity trapped in these fragments of abandoned art.
This sketchbook is the beginning of the first of a series of creative reclamation projects I'm calling 'The Books of the Dead'.
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I believe - and this is a belief that's come out of this project - that all creative blocks result from trauma, even if the trauma is so slight, you hardly even notice it - and if you've lost any part of your creativity, you've lost a bit of yourself.
Isn't that what we beings are, units of creativity?
Each of my Books of The Dead will be a reclamation of lost creativity.
Just doing this sketchbook has been self-empowering. Each of its pages is a sub-project waiting to be developed, through examination and reflection, into more finished, clarified, artworks.
I've begun collating material for Books of The Dead: Book Two. It will begin with another Art House Co-op project: The Limited Edition Book Series. The theme I've chosen to interpret this time is Thread & Surface. From the Art House web site about this project:
"Every contributor to the Sketchbook Project Limited Edition Vol. 1 will be included in a series of art books documenting the project. Together, the series will provide insight into the imagination and process of each artist participating in the project. Bound by the Brooklyn Art Library Press and hand-finished in our Brooklyn workshop, the book series will be published in the fall of 2012".
