Illinois
Julia González
Altered Book:
Leap, Terry Tempest Williams (2000)
Rebound into three volumes within original paintings by González.
Artist Statement
“Can a painting be a prayer?” Terry Tempest Williams inquires in Leap. The book guides the reader through an intimate exploration of Hieronymus Bosch’s El Jardin de Las Delicias. The author’s thoughts and memories are intertwined in her obsessive observations of each blot of paint that forms the bodily and ecological composition. Her deep compassion for the Earth, the artist, and the painting is striking. My first copy of Leap got lost in my urgency to lend the book to every person I came to know. My rebinding of the book seeks to take Williams’s own obsession further, emulating the form of the triptych by making three volumes from the original one. Each is read alone, can be separated, but meaning is lost without the rest. What happens when things are hidden from us? What happens when we can see or perceive what is right in front of us, but choose to ignore what is there? “The greatest sin is the sin of indifference.” The three volumes rely upon one another to give you Williams’s full message of passion, horror, and hope. Each book is covered in a section of my own abstracted version of El Jardin.
Short Bio
After spending the last year and a half in central Maine, Julia González spends a lot of time thinking about roadkill, slime mold, and how to find community in isolation. She is still in a loving partnership with painting. Julia is now freshly settled in Chicago, where she works at the arts nonprofit, Marwen.