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Birthday Suit, Denis Brown, 2003
Calligraphy on, and underneath transparent calfskin vellum.
4 calfskin vellum panels presented as one work, 30 x 63 cm. Each panel is stretched over a plywood board which was sealed and faced with museum board. The 4 are framed together as you see them. The technique is explored in a workshop I offer on vellum.
First (top) panel
Birthday Suit is written on top of the transparent vellum, the flourishes are underneath, showing through the skin. The term relates to Catherine Byron's text on panel three,described below. Gold symbols along the bottom represent the gradual historical development of our roman letter A from the ancient Phoenician Aleph, which was represented by an ox-head. So just as the vellum writing surface came from the ox, so too did our primary letter. A strand of horsehair is attached over the writing, another animal element in this layered sandwich of: paper, ink, skin, ink, hair. The left and right edges are gilt with gold leaf.
Second panel
This vellum is from a very strongly marked natural calfskin. An illuminated square of letters and a single letter A in black ink are the only additional marks on this panel. The colored square features white painted letters spelling 'skin' and 'inks', whether read vertically or horizontally. This is a development of the conceptual play relating the surface and the message it carries -'skin' and 'inks' are anagrams of each other.
Third panel
This text is written on paper underneath the transparent calfskin. The vellum is so fine and thin that it is like tracing paper, yet bears natural tones and hair follicles. This is known as slunk vellum, as it comes from naturally stillborn calves- animals slung from the mothers body - a tragic end of a pure life untainted by the outside world... an innocent whose death preceded its birth.
The remarkable text of this panel is from poet Catherine Byron's book, The Getting of Vellum, a book inspired by our collaborations. Catherine witnessed the skinning of a 'three days dead calf' and found it to be 'like watching a birth, not a flaying, this headfirst slow emergence from its skin as if from the birth canal'. You can order this book on Amazon.
White flourishes and colored dots on top of the vellum, and some horsehair, complete this panel.
Fourth panel
Animal rationale: a reasoning animal- normally referring to man, but in this context also suggesting the calves whose tragic end was a first step to immortality in in the form of manuscript books made from their skins. The knowledge contained in books is the reasoning aspect given to these calves. Again this is transparent vellum, but this time what shows through from underneath is human skin... the vellum is stretched over a print bearing a photographic image of my own stomach.
A quotation at the very base of this panel is from the opening of an Anglo Saxon riddle which describes the making of a book:
A life-thief stole my world-strength,
Ripped off flesh and left me skin,
Dipped me in water and drew me out.
Stretched me bare in the tight sun...
Detail showing hairs emerging from a square cut hole in the transparent calfskin
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©2011 Denis Brown | www.quillskill.com |
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