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Requiem 2009
Unique, 170 pages
Closed:
11.75 x 10. 25 x 5.75 inches
Open:
11.75 x 18 x 5 inches
Handmade
Cave Paper folded and sewn, with padding compound by Amanda Degener
Hand
lettered with gouache, sumi and walnut ink, pen; with painted woven Tyvek by
Jan owen
Case:
binder’s board with paste paper
Requiem began as a gift. Several years
ago I met papermaker, Amanda Degener and she gave me a large book made of her
Cave Papers saying, “Do something with it.” She had folded and bound the brown
and black papers and slathered red padding compound on the back. It was heavy,
tactile, rough and beautiful in itself and it took time to know what to do. It
had heft and needed big words.
I had
never thought of using war as a subject until the Bangor Symphony where I
played string bass, performed Benjamin Britten’s “War Requiem.” The piece is
war transformed by art - words that combine the tradition of the requiem mass
with the poetry of Wilfred Owen. It is harsh music combined with exquisite
beauty – the best and the worst that we can be. In the final Libera Me, the
tenor and bass sing Wilfred Owen’s poem, “Strange Friend;” about two soldiers
who have killed each other and ends with their voices intertwining, “Let us
sleep now, let us sleep now.” Then the chorus and soprano soar, “Into paradise
may the angels lead thee,” as we honor and remember those we have asked to
fight. It is visually and musically heart breaking.
Words
from the requiem mass began this book and then it sat awhile - waiting. It
waited until I met poet, Lee Sharkey and collaborated on several pieces using
her war poems. She is a member of Women in Black and joins others reading names
of military and civilian dead. For centuries, calligraphers have written
memorial books and the names became my connection to her poetry. I began
writing names vertically in this book, like the warp of war, mixing recent
names from different countries and conflicts. With each one, I wanted to
remember the sorrow of family and of my community for a young man who died as a
fighter pilot. Interspersed are words by Tolstoy, Remarque, Whitman, Jeffers
and more - Wilfred Owen’s poems are some of the most powerful as he speaks of
the close bond between soldiers and also the fear, suffering and death – “the
pity of war.”
Writing
the book was a challenge; the rough pages and folds excluded guidelines and
each sheet had different texture and absorbency. It was like working with
something, not on it. The brown pages feel earthy; the black are rough but
crisp. It has felt like a collaboration of poetry, names, cautioning words we
forget, earth and sky, war and beauty - paper, pen and ink.
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