Description
The Distance Between is a three-dimensional artist book made of grey and white cast paper displayed on a painted custom-made wooden shelf. In its closed state a cup form protrudes out of the the rectangular-shaped book. On the cup on is written in raised pasta letters cast into the paper,”THE DISTANCE BETWEEN TWO HALVES”. When opened, we see that the book is an empty mold for a cup. Along the top of the mold is the text “A MEASURE TO CUP” and at its base is the text “WITH BOTH HANDS”, both are written in pasta letters. A photo-lithograph image of the Mona Lisa’s hands is integrated into the inside of one of the molds . Parts of the inside of the mold are coloured with black acrylic paint.
Statement
“Karen Trask’s cast paper pieces, The Distance Between Two Halves and The Poetry Cup, resemble children’s mugs, with comments about poetry as a ‘holding cup’ and a ‘stirring cup’ spelled out in alphabet soup letters that spiral down their interior surfaces. Through these pieces, with their childhood associations, Trask captures the idea that language is both a reliquary and a crucible for the earliest memories of individuals and cultures”.
Mary K McIntyre, The Art of the Book ’93
Paper holds an inherent memory. This memory, in its accumulation of layers, allows a cradling of treasures and monstrosities. Memory, both collective and personal, being one of my thematic preoccupations, combines perfectly with my way of handling paper. In these paper works, surface and volume are built up in a multitude of paper pulp layers through the use of molds. In this way, paper is like a metaphor for my work with its dense structures of memory.
Karen Trask, 1990