Julia Leonard – Artist Statement

Making use of the book as an artistic medium is possible partly because of what we (Westerners) bring to the book, our collective connection with it. Since its inception we have imbued books and writing with a spiritual or magical aspect that goes beyond its physical or contextual properties. Experiencing a book is a tactile, intimate and private activity. It requires time, a slowing down and settling in. Books can act on us as an icon or reliquary does, evoking a spiritual reaction, a contemplative psychic space.

For me, books speak of the past, of what is gone or perhaps never was: a kind of slow beauty, longing and melancholy. I am drawn not only to the stories within, but the texture of the type, the smell of the paper, the feel of the covers, the physical presence of the book. Drawing on these impressions, I am looking at the visual quality of writing, language in its physical form. Writing has a power to evoke meaning and emotion that go beyond its literal meaning. Text, visually, can weave its own stories. In much of my edition and one of a kind work I am using words and the book, its physical form and textual content, as image, in order to weave a meaning that can be sensed rather than literally understood.

Content is necessarily selective. We create stories by inclusion and omission. Obscuring the text, changing the weave, can represent that selectivity. Using a nonlinear or partially unintelligible text is a way to suggest that it possibly could be told or heard in a different way.

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