Destroyer of Words

It was perfect and I was going to destroy it without even reading it

How I ended up attending art school is a story for another day.  I was there to study drawing, but in order to graduate with my coveted BFA, I’d have to take courses in a bunch of other disciplines that held no interest or appeal to me.  I can remember sitting in the advisor’s office and protesting that I just wanted to take 2 dimensional art courses. I lost that argument and was enrolled in a 3 dimensional sculpture course for the minimum requirement of three semesters.  This course was more focused on destruction rather than construction, or as I soon learned— deconstruction. I strongly disliked it, though it has made its mark on my art and I did learn a few useful things.

A flower I made out of spoons, possibly the only surviving relic from the sculpture course.

The first assignment in this aforementioned class was to find a book to use for art journaling and sketching out ideas. At a used book store, I found my book. Picking it up for the first time, it spoke to me.  Its solid weightiness felt magnificent in my hands and even the title was enchanting. I loved the aesthetics of the book; it had gorgeous images, thick creamy paper, large beautiful type, and a blue cloth bound cover.  I bought it for a dollar.  It was perfect and I was going to destroy it without even reading it.

My X-acto knife, preferred tool for precision in destruction.

Part of this assignment involved a set of prompts we were to supply an answer to in our books. “What would you do as president?”, “How can you make the world a better place?”, and similar questions were asked of us. Being young and impertinent, I felt these prompts were uninteresting and a waste of my time—especially for a class I already didn’t want to be in. I put zero thought or effort into my responses, further destroying this book with uninspired, lame drivel—and I fully knew it was lame, too. Just like the sculpture class itself, I was checking a box so I could move on to the things I really wanted to do.

I would be tasked with destroying yet another book in the next semester’s 3D class; this time with the requirement that the author was a Nobel laureate.  I chose a book I’d already read¹ because I was beginning to feel remorseful about the first book, which I knew I could never read now that I’d shamefully defaced so much of it. Still, I loved my book and occasionally I’d tear its beautiful pages out to use for art purposes, never caring what was written on those stolen leaves. 

I often incorporated words and text into my art as background and texture; it was pleasing to my eye and I felt it added interest and a soothing sort of rhythm². Years and years passed with me breaking this book apart little by little, taking and taking from it and slowly ridding it of the ugly stupidity I’d filled it with in college.

My hollowed out book and a bunch of art supplies used in its destruction.

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“Can you make me a few paintings incorporating these?” My husband asked as he handed me a printed copy of a declassified secret memo from Operation Torch. This was right up my alley and he knew it. The answer was an excited “Yes!”. We settled on the subject matter for four paintings, he delivered a huge stack of declassified memos to me, and I got to work on the series; one of which would feature the memos. As I sifted through the papers, cutting them apart and affixing them to my canvas, curiosity got the better of me and I started reading. (What is it about human nature that makes us so curious about forbidden secrets?) For the first time, the words I was placing in my art became more than interesting background texture, and I quit thinking of them that way.  The memos fascinated me. What was redacted and what was left, what had been deemed as appropriate for the eyes of the public, and why?  ³

Around this same time, book banning and censorship had been in the news and I started to hear about books that had fallen victim to that practice—books that I had fuzzy memories of reading many years ago, back when I actually read them rather than ruined them.  I did not think about my book; at this time it was tucked temporarily away in a storage facility, already censored beyond readability by my own hand.

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Some years later, I found myself at a spiritual low point; despondent and forlorn, angry, and with an urgent need to make something. If I could create, I might get out of the abyss.  My book was mostly torn to bits now and shuffled into a box of random scrap papers. Fragments of its distinct thick creamy paper and large beautiful font were mixed in with other pieces of my life— failed prints, junk mail, interesting wrapping paper, magazine clippings, greeting cards, etc, etc, etc.  Rifling through, it was one of those book fragments that caught my attention and caused me to quit my search.  I picked up the delightfully familiar-to-my-touch paper and, for the first time, a word caught my attention. It was like a blindfold had fallen from my eyes. I tried to read it—first that one scrap, and then every scrap I could find, tearing desperately through my papers for more of the sublime little sentence fragments, hidden like Easter Eggs in my box of recollections and regrets⁴. But Easter Eggs don’t contain treasures of this magnitude. What was this book even about, anyway?  

Firmly resolved to right the wrong I’d done to this faithful old friend for so many years, I typed Wind, Sand, and Stars by Antione de Saint Exupéry into the search engine on my phone. Yes, my friends, that is the marvelous book I ruined. After a little online digging, I found it…or more accurately, it found me again and this time I was ready.  The book that I had bought for a dollar all those years ago cost me considerably more, double the original cost for every year I’d spent in oblivion. Fully contrite, I paid the penalty. Impatiently, I waited to have it in my hands, to love it and cherish it intimately for its contents as much as I had for its first visual and mystical appeal. When the book arrived, I tore through it— this time with my eyes and not my hands.

This was drawn from life, not a photo, so just try to imagine me with an awkwardly balanced sketchbook trying to capture the relaxing on the couch with a book vibe.

When I began writing this post, I pulled out my new copy of Wind, Sand and Stars. I opened the book at random and the pages parted immediately to this quote that I had marked on that first reading:

“All of us have had the experience of a sudden joy that came when nothing in the world had forewarned us of its coming—a joy so thrilling that if it was born of misery we remembered even the misery with tenderness. All of us, on seeing old friends again, have remembered with happiness the trials we lived through with those friends. Of what can we be certain except this—that we are fertilized by mysterious circumstances? Where is man's truth to be found?”

I can’t sum up my journey with this book any better than those words that the book itself has spoken. Reading its words at last brought joy, sorrow, shame, wonder and gratefulness for the second chance to discover this magnificent book and to rediscover my long lost love of reading. I still use text in my art, but I no longer tear apart beautiful things—I only give new life to the already broken; I rescue them as Wind, Sand, and Stars has rescued me.

Lost and found; the shell of the old book resting on the new book.

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This summer I have been taking on all the house projects I don’t have the bandwidth to deal with during the school year plus researching and purchasing our curricula. I am planning on reviving our drawing lessons, though I think our art history focus will be on classical architecture (and the art that adorns it!). It looks to be a very busy school year; I will post sketches as time allows, but I can’t promise a weekly letter, especially as we begin the year and find our footing. Thank you to all you truly lovely people who have joined me here and continue to encourage me in my art. I am humbly grateful for the time and space you allow for my scribbled thoughts and images.

*All sketches are done by hand by me with a sharpie pen from life observation. If you’d like to see more of my art, you can find it HERE.

I hope your weekend brings you a sudden thrilling joy fertilized by mysterious circumstances; and if you’ve read Wind, Sand and Stars, I’d love to hear about it.

-Jenn

End of the wholly unknown (DECLASSIFIED). 2020

P.S. I made a whole series of redacted art and life scraps after the above experience. I think it draws attention to the words of the books rather than just shoves them in the background. It makes you wonder what has been blocked out and why and to consider what has been left behind, just like I was drawn into the memos and eventually the book fragments themselves. This one has scraps of art I made and a piece of a secret memo. I love to make these when I am creatively stuck and stagnant.

1. I chose John Steinbeck, and found beat up paperback copies of The Grapes of Wrath and Cannery Row. These ruined books would also go on to feature heavily in future art.

2. An example of what happened to my book. Self portrait painted over a woodcut printed onto the book pages.

Show Some Spine. 2014

Operation Torch. 2017

3.

4. I made a painting about a month or two prior to this called Recollections and Regrets. All that stuff is from my scrap box. In the middle, note the scrap of paper from my book. So very much a part of my life.

Recollections and Regrets. 2020