Tragic Beauty.

Beauty comes in many forms not all of which are pretty. The Tragic beauty book is a collaborative project organized by members of Booklyn and Artichoke Press. I am not sure how many books have been published but in 2005, when I was asked to participate, six books had been published. All participants were given dimensions and fold placements and asked to create 30 pages for the book. The book wishes to examine all that the artists who participate consider that which is beautiful and tragic. I used a design of the sporozoan on one side of the page and on the other I broke up the page into seven stories. I took pictures of death and destruction across NYC. I used the recent vandalism of on of my public sculptures as the center piece and framed it with images of dead animals in the street, dead houses collapsing and homeless people.

The page is a screen print containing around 30 colours. Some of the image is hand drawn and some digital with hand manipulation. It required 19 folds and hours of cutting to finish the piece so that it could be given to the book binder.

Art finds the best in us.