Lilt, a book-object-portrait, gambols in the space between book & portrait, text as imagery, the body as a 2D unfolding event—a person distilled into colorfields & bits of a life recollected. Using extracted text from Edward Tufte’s books on data visualization, combined with original fragmentary writing, Lilt acts as grief processed into a paper ritual which memorializes my grandmother, Lil Gorham, who passed away in 2016. Connecting and sometimes overlapping at the folds, Lilt is comprised of two folded folios tipped together. Each folio has three folded columns and two folded rows, dividing the piece, which has a letterpress printed photo on it, into a macrocosmic visual approximation of the figure, like so: sandy blonde hair, blue eyes, a frosted pink lip, and ash. The columns of text that border the outsides of each folio are designed to approximate an obituary column in a newspaper. The object can be unfolded and viewed on a table top, or hung on wall.

Letterpress printed on a Vandercook 219AB from photopolymer plates on Awagami Shin Inbe

AB Gorham