The Voynich Manuscript

This is version two of my post. I just lost the first one into the void. I hate computers.

A few years ago, my boyfriend found an internet reference to a book called the Voynich manuscript. It was evidently produced in the Renaissance. It is full of great drawings and a totally untranslatable script. Here is a page with some good pictures of pages from the book. This is a very indepth page on the history and theories surrounding this mysterious book. I like the cosmological drawings the best. Most fans of the book seem to focus on the drawings of little naked ladies dancing around connected by tubes. Go figure.

The book is a common motif in my work as you may have noticed by now. So naturally I had to make my own Voynich manuscript. I started with a poem, that I wrote and inscribed into the book. Then I circled the word "star" and painted a blue wash over the rest of the poem.

This is in connection to a long ongoing project I've been working on in my studio for, oh, years now. The first picture posted here is of part of the project. I have two copies of an oldish book called Modern British Poetry. The word star occurs on many of the pages. In the first book I circled the word wherever it occurred in blue ball point pen. Then I painted an indigo wash on all the rest of the pages. This took about two years. I found the second copy of the book when I was almost finished with the first one. In that book, I cut out the word star and am still, now, painting out all the pages with blue watercolor. I'm not a big "process" person when it comes to things like this.

So that was the springboard for the painting book. A book of paintings with book as its theme. The next to last picture is the "circular ruins" that I also later drew on the little ceramic book in my last post. The rest of the images from the book I will leave as mysteries.

The painting on the wall in the background in my studio in the last photo is a series of "portraits" of the painting book. In my ceramic work, I often pair pieces with drawings or paintings. There are some examples on the main website. I'll post more from a show I had in 2002.

This allows me to create an atmosphere and a context for my often hermetic pieces. Otherwise they seem orphaned when yanked from my studio and put in a white cube.