Remainders: god, sex and animals talking, began with nine banned books, all incorporating women names in the titles. My idea was to use books considered dirty. To make the piece I used a process that was not only about cleaning but that was once considered women’s work. I decided to wash and dry each book and use the lint produced by the loads of laundry. As the book is washed it falls apart and loses some of its integrity, words are lost and sentences erased. Though much disappears the lint captures what does not dissipate and traps bits of the book. Originally, the actual lint was attached to a panel- one panel per book. As a reader, destroying books in order to produce lint caused discomfort. In order to deal with that I began to ponder the pieces of books left behind. I thought it would be interesting to investigate how far these books could go before they lost a sense of potency and meaning.

I began to make photographic images of what was left behind. Laundering took the book from being a concrete object with the ability to communicate a story, characters, concepts etc. to a maimed fragment of itself. Yet through the photographic process this hobbled book became a be­ guiling sculptural object that had the ability to communicate through the language that survived. If you are familiar with these books one can recognize sentences, character names and small bits of plot in the fragments. I am interested in the combination of randomness and control the process offers. Random because I cannot dictate how the washing process destroys the books and control because I determine how the remnants will be dealt with photographically.

The photographic images are accompanied by a collection of small sculptural objects, made from pieces of the book that survived. These remainders are coated in wax and fixed in shapes reminiscent of nests, fists or other body parts, and in some ways are like elegiac markers of what was once there. They may feel tomblike and mournful but upon closer inspection one can see that much of the language still survives.

The project contains 45 banned or challenged books, 2012.

Images 20×16” inkjet prints

Wax pieces various sizes.