FOBA 2021 Challenge Book
Technique and materials used:
This simple sewn pamphlet structure incorporates 140 lb. watercolor paper and Zanders Mill Elephant Hide paper. I created the hand lettering, mark making, and staining with a variety of calligraphic tools such as pointed, folded, and ruling pens using walnut ink, sumi ink, colored inks, watercolor, metallic pigments, and gum arabic.
About the work:
This work describes an ideal world, that is no particular geographic place, but one that we could create in any and all places, a place in which to live, where “humanity can start afresh…[where] the ones with abundance do not look down at the poor and needy, [where] we will all learn to care.”
The phrase “tabula rasa,” Latin for “scraped tablet”, often translated as “blank slate,” or one in which writing has been erased. It appears in the writings of ancient and medieval philosophers as well as modern and contemporary ones, often to reflect the idea that the mind arrives in the world as a blank slate to be written upon by external impressions and experiences. The quote reflected in this work is from author Henry Martin, from his book Mad Days of Me: Escaping Barcelona.