TEXT-OBJECT-PROCESS: “NEGATIVE SPACE IS THE NEW BLACK”*

* A phrase coined by my friend Peter Bugg.

And the last step is the most fun, the peeling away, subtractive shaping of the text. This seems like it would be a dangerous, nerve-wracking thing to do, but the paper is incredibly resilient (it’s Somerset Book Heavyweight) and the work is slow enough where it is actually hard to make mistakes (and mistakes are easy enough to fix on a partially destroyed object anyway, and part of this is about all of the “mistakes” made).



I want to figure out way to take advantage of the way that the partially peeled pieces look. It’s a question of legibility (is the partially covered text legible?) and how to structure the action (hand-mechanical, anti-compositional). Perhaps for next year’s broadsides.

Doing things like this always leaves behind interesting detritus:



Yes, I keep them. No, I don’t know what to do with them yet. But one thing leads to another….