Artwork title : TABULA RASA and ROSA muse-bookmark, Experimental Textile Artist-Book Sculpture (Image Copyright © Matthew Burch Photography 2020/2021)

Tabula Rasa and Rosa combined: Length  31 cm, Width 25 cm, Depth 5 cm, Weight 0,336 kg. Materials: Handmade. Antique silk Dupioni, handmade fish skin leather (from repurposed food waste), naturally dyed with tea and eucalyptus bark, hand-made eucalyptus ink. Freshwater seed pearls. Silks dyed with woad and roses grown by artist. Natural rose thorns.

Tabula Rasa was part of The Book of Becoming Assemblage (2020/21), my first experimental 7 textile artist books, symbolising a metaphoric journey of becoming, imperishability of art, wonder of knowledge, future informed by intangible heritage given agency through materials and poetic freedom. Emitting aura of museum exponatus, it alludes to metaphoric new beginnings, unwritten stories, informed by ancestral knowledge.

Tabula Rasa accompanied by handwoven Rosa muse-bookmark – metaphor for Nature, artist’s muse and mentor, dyed with plants from my garden. Central to this work is the freshwater seed pearls asemic text, creating new artistic  alphabets. These are lines in the sands of time, some remain, others – float away. Nothing truly vanishes, things, people, ideas, histories become invisible, forgotten, layered silently informing what follows, waiting to be discovered. Everything is connected. I hope this book could be perceived by the viewer, as though it has been ‘written’ for them, enabling to unlock narratives of their own in the palimpsest of suggested histories. Each pearl – a human being, a letter in universal alphabet, as we all truly are unique, but interconnected gems. Created moment of discovery unveils an ancient treasure witnessing something potent with time. These miniscule pearlescent glimpses are about desire and anticipation, magic and longing, I wanted the viewer to flush with hot human blood, eager to turn the page and to be terrified to. Some will find poetry, some will see tears, mine is never just one story.

To create a roll-cover I have handcrafted fish leather cloth, utilizing one of the world’s oldest indigenous crafts, invoking tacit knowledge, bringing forward intangible global heritage and resonance of sustainable practice today. This awareness is central to my thinking.

The leaves of text block were crafted from antique handwoven silk Dupioni – though notionally representing ‘tabula rasa’, they  are far from plain or boringly sterile. They already carry many stories of the past, much like I do – it is just a matter of communicating them.

Fraying and thread entanglement is also explored artistically alluding to emotions.

Rosa, apart from obvious link to book arts (it being a bookmark) has hidden messages. The cordage is stitch-bound together by Coptic binding and ‘sewing on tapes’ technique, which makes the bookmark resemble the spine of a manuscript on closer inspection. Real rose thorns were imbedded with buttonhole stitch. Why thorns? Because my Muse is not blinded by superficial meaningless beauty, she sees the pain and the darkness in the world, and it makes her whole. In close up the thorns impart an almost reptile, selachimorphous, disquieting atmosphere, contrasting with dreamy innocence of neighbouring blooms. I wanted that fear, that edge of the blade next to the exquisite, ephemeral and transient. I wanted that conflict, that question – to make the work real and piercing, raw, to touch the heart, to make the viewer feel, be unsettled, be alive.

Artist's Social Media: Graduate showcase: 

https://gradshows.uca.ac.uk/showcase/elena-sparke-textiles/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/curator_of_chance/