Echo

Handbound artist book, 64 pages, open edition, French Fold accordion, giclée on Hanhnemühle paper. Original poetry and art ©2009 Maureen Piggins, Front cover photograph of artist's mother circa 1965, credit unknown. Dimensions: Closed: 5"h x 4.25"w x1.5"d; Fully extended: 5"h x 9 feet long.

29 poems and 30 drawings/paintings created around the subject of my mother's illness and death from cancer.

The book reads from the front cover through to the end of one side, with the back cover turned like another page, and continues along the second side back to the front cover. The symbolism of the double-sided accordion format is two-fold: the content in the first half deals chronologically with illness, while the second half begins with the terminal clarity of death and explores the process of mourning; the intention is to make these two phases distinct yet connected. As grieving is not a linear process, we return again and again to the beginning, before death, reaching for memory, understanding and acceptance.

The book was accepted as a special submission to the Cancer Council Victoria's Art Awards, for a touring exhibition in Melbourne, Australia and throughout regional Victoria during summer-winter 2009. 

Excerpts from the book appeared in the collaborative exhibition "A Book About Death", Emily Harvey Gallery, New York, NY, USA, Sept. 2009. The exhibition was acquired for the permanent collection of The Museum of Modern Art in New York, with plans for re-exhibition at the MOMA. Additional exhibitions of "A Book About Death" were shown at The Queen’s Museum of Art, Queens, NY, USA; The Otis College of Art and Design, Westfield, NJ, USA; and South End Open Studios, Boston, Massachusetts, USA, with future exhibits to be held in Montreal, Mexico, Belgium and São Paulo, Brazil.