Stephanie Wolff
Norwich, VT
www.stephaniewolffstudio.com
IG: @stephaniewolffstudio

Of the Air
2023
Paper, watercolor, board, bookcloth
7.75 x 6.5 x .875 inches closed

Artist Statement

What does cold or hot specifically mean if not connected to an actual temperature? What does a sky look like when it’s very cold to the point of freezing? And does the sky look any different when it’s very hot, such as a temperature of three digits measured in Fahrenheit degrees? Do such descriptions of the air bring a particular sky to mind? Or a specific feeling?

Of the Air contains weather notations drawn from the almanacs of a 19th century N.J. woman, Anna Blackwood Howell, which were kept from the early 1800s until her death in 1855. These descriptions are interpreted through tiny watercolor paintings, imagined skies of the temperature these words are meant to evoke.

As I researched Howell’s almanacs for my larger Along the Banks of My River project, her accounts of weather became a throughline in the work produced. Though she never noted any temperatures in degrees, her reports about the land, the outlook of the day, agricultural events, and her personal feelings perhaps conveyed more through her use of language than anything numbers would have made known.

One visual interpretation of these weather terms is shown in this book, but an additional set of the printed pages is provided as cards. These allow for a reader to also create their own translation of words into a visual representation, whether a single person mounts their own paintings, or the cards are reproduced for multiple people or iterations of the process.

The book was letterpress printed at May Day Studio with handcoloring and binding done in my own studio, both in Vermont. Bound in a hardcover accordion, with cards in a glassine envelope, and both housed in a wrapper and hardcover slipcase. A variable edition of 18 plus two APs.