Space Folds
shrinking and expanding to accommodate the future
Arch 2, multi-layer Risograph Print. 8 x 8 inches, 2023. Printed by the artist during an artist residency at Oddities Prints in Kansas City.
As the to-do lists at home are scratched off and minimized, an imminent space opens further in the calendar of my near future. Soon my family and I will be immersed in new lives abroad, living in Australia for half of 2024.
My life in Kansas City is unfolding, while I simultaneously tuck, pack, and situate my suitcases into squares of neatly folded cubes of efficient accommodation. The travel bags are the only actual stuff that will accompany us on both sides of this equation.
detail of a folded mountain
Ravel 3, multi-layer lithograph, 25.5 x 20.5 inches, 2022. Printed and published by Flatbed Press, Austin, Texas.
“The shrinking, folding, and expanding process is part of what enables movement.”
RGB Colorspace Atlas, artist book by Tauba Auerbach
It is a very small and select collection of matter that we are choosing to move from one portion of the earth to another. Eventually, we will leave some of these things there, while bringing other things from there, back to here. As humans do.
The shrinking, folding, and expanding process is part of what enables movement. Through this, I am reminded of how I teach book arts and discuss the traits and benefits of collapsibility. In artists’ books, the tangibility of the artwork itself requires hands-on engagement, usually through a 1:1 relationship with the reader. As the form is engaged with, at least two narratives are shared; what is depicted, and what is embodied.
And that’s the key, isn’t it? Staying embodied within a constantly-moving process is what keeps us together when folding time and space.
This is evident even in just one medium-sized, bright red suitcase, shared with my 8-year-old, headed to Australia in a matter of days.
My son Alex, age 8.