Narrative Flow; The Unbinding of a Novel

Dec. 2 – January 20

Writer Martha Baillie filled the gallery with artifacts in an installation using the edited manuscript pages of her novel, The Shape I Gave You.

“Was it because the central character of my novel was a sculptor that I decided to make sculptures from the novel itself, or was I rebelling against notions of fixity, completion, one-sided possession, the book as inorganic “product” - plaything of the marketplace? In any case, I stripped the cover off a paperback copy of my novel, bought a pouch of tobacco, sat down with a friend at the dining room table, tore pages from the book and used these to roll cigarettes. The cover became the box to hold the cigarettes. The curving, disappearing words acquired new meaning.
Manuscript pages stood in stacks on the floor of my study. I glued several hundred pages together, took them to a furniture maker who drilled out a core sample. The core came out in curious segments, stubby pillars of compressed words. From the manuscript a black hole yawned.
And what if acupuncture needles were applied to certain words? Might this improve narrative flow?.....”

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