April, Or
April, Or, 2009 / Varied edition of 10 / Archival inkjet on Dobbin Mill papers
Size: 12.5” x 9.4” x .4”
Two parallel texts are presented on folded slips of papers, interspersed on the pages throughout April, Or. These fragments are The Secret Language of Flowers, which tells the story of HM, the memory-impaired patient who was pivotal in memory research over the past half century, and, April, an emotional poem of personal loss.
The pages of the book are otherwise blank; they vary in surface & color, some containing significant holes. These openings have been formed by stencil & water in the papermaking process and allow for a rich layering of edges and text, hidden & revealed.
Together and in tandem, the papers and texts form a testament to memory and understanding.
Additional information:
Henry Gustav Molaison was known as HM or H.M., a memory-impaired patient who was widely studied from the late 1950s until his death. He underwent surgery to control his intractable epilepsy: … After the surgery, he suffered from severe anterograde amnesia: although his working memory and procedural memory were intact, he could not commit new events to long-term memory…. Through the (extensive) experiments with HM, scientists saw that there were at least two systems in the brain for creating new memories.
(-- from Wikipedia)