Requiem
2009Jan Owen, calligraphy, Amanda Degenger, handmade Cave Paper and binding11.75 x 10.25 x 5.75 inchesHand lettered one handmade paper with gouache, sumi and walnut ink with woven Tyvek. At an artist retreat, I shared a table with papermaker, Amanda Degener. She’d brought a thick, bound, blank book of her walnut and black paper seconds. She had folded the papers in half, sewn them together and slathered the spine with red padding compound. She left it for me with a note, “Do something with this.” After playing Benjamin Britten’s War Requiem, I knew the Requiem Mass would be the primary text across all the pages of Requiem, accompanied by war poetry. The Mass would be the warp of the book while names of about 1,000 military and civilian casualties from the Iraq war would be the weft. As a calligrapher, I’d lettered names on hundreds of diplomas and thousands of envelopes. Our names are our identity and legacy.
