Mara Adamitz Scrupe
New Canton, VA
https://www.scrupe.com
https://www.instagram.com/marascrupe/

TELL (self-observations of a paramnesiac)
2024
Tooled and gilded French goatskin binding, gilded book fastener, hand embroidered title plate, original poem, original prairie drawings (oil stick, charcoal, pastel, graphite on paper), mulberry and other specialty papers, digitally printed
13.5″ x 10.5″ x 1.5″ (closed)

TELL (self-observations of a paramnesiac) is inspired by ancient craft, specifically the medieval codex, and bound and decorated with stylized leather tooling and gold and silver gilding. Archaic, even anachronistic, my purpose in employing this approach is to suggest historic, ongoing human relationships with elevated craft, alongside an almost undeniable attraction to sumptuousness, again as evidenced in the medieval codex with its lavishly illuminated and rubricated religious and instructive imagery and texts.

We live in a time when handwork has become less and less often undertaken in everyday life, and less frequently taught and furthered in terms of contributing to a fundamentally valued skillset. In TELL I eagerly explore both the meanings of human handiwork in terms of the creative impulse, alongside the intrinsic mark of the human hand in objects like the artist book that encompass timeworn technology that I revive and renew via the application of contemporary digital strategies.

TELL (self-observations of a paramnesiac), combines materials and processes that would be very familiar to a 10th century scribe, with present day making techniques, imagery ,and poetry. In this project, rather than inserting digital reproductions of my prairie drawings, I’ve tipped in the actual, original oil stick, pastel, graphite, and charcoal as a nod to ancient books that I love (Kells, Durrow, et al) – that contain hand wrought, one-of-a-kind images of wildlife, landscapes, saints, and sinners. In my book, the drawings reflect on the wide-open prairies of western Minnesota where I lived during winter/ spring 2024 while I served as Distinguished Visiting Professor in the Liberal Arts, University of Minnesota Morris. Night comes quickly to the northern plains, and these drawings document that brief time when dusk draws down, and the landscape becomes a blur of field stubble, red sumac, and just plowed black Lester soils ready for planting. It is my intention that these images communicate a richness countering my book’s gilded and ornamented binding and outer folio, while also suggesting alternate interpretations of “lush extravagance” in the exuberance of their energy and materiality. Likewise, my project’s poetry is an effusion of language addressing the deep geologic and human histories of the northern plains, with my own sometimes blurred and conflated memories of a part of the world where I was born and raised.

When I first recognized my deep affection for paleography, I quickly understood the ways in which the early makers lured the reader in with magnificent materials and decorations, and only then presented their religious, instructive intentions. TELL (self-observations of a paramnesiac), employs a similarly sneaky approach – I intend for the reader of this and my other artist books, upon encountering the rather opulent outer presentation, to be irresistibly attracted to opening them, and discovering their content: my ongoing research synthesizing language, rendered images, preserved specimens, and archaic craft in narratives grounded in the natural world. I combine drawings, photographs, poetry, and narrative writing that investigate a terrain of psychic, emotional and physical kinship with the workings of nature, asking readers to explore their own relationships with landscapes, plants, and animals in the context of human societies. Through my research and practice, I strive to reveal how we as thinking animals in our human societies are shaped and changed – emotionally, socially, and spiritually – by our integration with the natural world.