artist books

The bits and pieces for this book were all collected in or around the Meenakshi Temple in Madurai. Inside the temple the floors are constantly swept to keep a sense of order and reverence in the space so I was unsure of finding anything. To my delight I found this matchbox near were some workmen were renovating part of the temple, I suspect one of them dropped it and the timing was perfect to swoop in and pick it up before one of the vigilant sweeping ladies spirited it away. Day ticked right there and then!

The rest of the papers were a selection of blue and red tickets, a small peach coloured envelope, a page from a calendar for the day before my visit, a scrap of material, receipts form the temple entrance, a flower head dropped in the temple and a plastic circular object, found just outside the temple, which is usually attached to objects hung underneath two entwined trees that represent the male and female life forces. People who are struggling to conceive hang these offerings under the trees and light candles in the hope that it will encourage fertility to blossom.

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When I create a tiny book it is important to me that every surface is used as there is not a huge amount of space to play with in the first place. So each book is always two sided or reversible it has to be interesting from many angles. With this one it was obvious how the two sides would be created as there were two clear sets of colour to work with. Another concept I had in mind for this one was to make sure everything was in odd numbers as that is important in Hinduism and everything in the temple is laid out in odd numbers. The temples towers always have an odd number of layers and openings. Seven is my favourite number being the day I was born and the area code for where I grew up so I was delighted to find the calendar page with a seven on it plus it fitted the theme perfectly. I love these little moments of serendipity!

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Finally I was determined to use the tiny hand written piece of paper given to us by a lovely stall holder in the market next to the temple. We were looking for rangoli stencils to take home to create the beautiful rice flour patterns you see everywhere on the doorstep to a house or shop. Having not had much luck finding them this gentleman wrote out for us in Tamil (I think) what it was we were searching for and pointed us to a lady around the corner. Eventually the lady was found and the objects were purchased so this little piece of paper was an important part of that day.