Description
About this piece:
The text in Geography of Lost is a poem inspired by an article on Lost Person Behavior, the science of knowing where to search for someone based on which of 41 profiles applies. Implicit in my poem are hard things, feeling forlorn when contemplating a family history of depression, substance abuse, dementia, suicide and other mostly unseen manifestations of hopelessness. There are so many ways to be lost – the thesaurus entry lists over 60 words including disoriented and vanished. Pulling apart and fracturing my poem’s lines set them adrift amid images of my aerial snow-covered landscapes photographed on a winter flight and overlaid with askew grids.
Unryu white paper and Strathmore tracing paper pages with Haijiro cover paper. Digital images & letterpress text on two overlapping pamphlet stitched signatures in a trifold cover inside a Khadi paper phase box enclosure
Materials:
paper, ink, thread
About the artist:
Ellen Sheffield is a visual artist, poet and teacher based in Gambier, Ohio and Point Richmond, California. Her works on paper and artist’s books play with image and text intersections to create unexpected readings. Collaborations with poets, experiments with found text and working with visual scores are some of the ways she engages with themes of place, memory and language perception. She recently finished 14 years of teaching Book Arts in the Kenyon College Art Department and continues to teach virtual workshops for arts centers around the country.
