An update on my ongoing artist book, Hold Hands Spring Tide. Much has happened since the last update - I've added pages, layers, stitching, personal artefacts held in pockets and naturally dyed panels. I submitted the artist book, secured with a simple machine-sewn binding, for assessment in early June, though looking back, the work seems physically thin. I've expanded considerably since.
Towards the end of June, I was hospitalized. Though I took HHST with me on the ward, I was only able work periodically. Instead, I documented what I could in writing, recording my experiences before and during the month I was there. Impressions, routines, personnel, patients, medications, psychiatric phenomena, progressions and regressions. Much of my memory during this time has shifted or retreated, so these notes are both difficult to process and precious.
Home now, I have been catching up, transcribing the notes to the fabric pages of HHST. It takes a lot of physical effort, and each letter, each stroke or eye takes up little space, so the rate of accumulation is slow. But the gradual development of the work - and the commitment to a dedicated space - is fruitful. Viewing the body of work is witnessing a bold cache of what has become a reflex - observe, note, process, translate. It feels more impactful, this way.
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