Whatever It Is You Are Looking For, Its Looking For You Too
The University of North Texas Special Collections | Artist Book Collection
Fall 2021
A unique one-volume edition, “Whatever it is that you are looking for, It's looking for you too” was published by Claire Schmalzried through the University of North Texas’ College Visual Arts and Design fab lab and printmaking studio.
Through the layering of a living archive and a comprehensive reading list kindly provided in parts, this open letter invites you to create an intimate space to walk a labyrinth of interwoven stories and histories between the crossroads of 2021, 1981, 2012, 1944, and 1902 and what will be your unimaginable future. So dear reader, to Auld Lang Syne and the love that lives beyond the years. I hope this book finds you exactly where you are.
This book was purchased through the Bineal Book Arts Competition held by the Greater Denton Arts Council and UNT Special Collections and can now be requested for on-site viewing.
My iCloud Storage is a Disaster
Laser Etched Artist Book
Fall 2021
Notable Quotations:
“I dont look in the mirror, I lose my mind a little, I close my eyes, I dont look people in the eye ... I have slow confusing dreams at night you know how it is”
"It’s all forgetting and fumbling at the edge of torn nothing"
“I would always choose a tragedy where the screaming is turned all the way up than relive that silence where all I can do is watch the car coming
Some it feels like blindly feeling at a tear in the paper and feeling an imperceptible breeze through the space around my fingertips tracing the edge of a too clean wound”
My iCloud Storage is a Disaster is a labyrinth form folding artist book centered on the experience of Aphantasia.
aph·an·ta·sia ˌa-ˌfan-ˈtā-zh(ē-)ə : the inability to form mental images of real or imaginary people, places, or things.
This book was a fun challenge in asking the question how does one make art about a phenomenon that centers around a lack of imagery and symbols? What does one do about a very full vibrant nothing?
This challenge lead to the concept of a wallet-size photo The photo corners and frames are still there but the photos have long since disappeared and what remains is simple text on white paper. The way paper fades around the edges alluding to things once there, the laser-etched edged text and resulting discolorations unravel to reveal the edges of statements and phrases on the emotional nature of memory and dreaming without images.
My Hair is Stil Wet From the Shower & The Dreams
My Hair is Still Wet From the Shower & the Dreams is a sculptural artist's book exploring the physical nature of water, memories regarding water, mental health, and comfort in dreaming from the point of view of someone who lacks mental imagery.
We often go to bed with wet hair that stains our pillowcases and some of us wake up with hair still damp the same way others have dreams linger and follow them throughout the next day.
The text covers personal anecdotes, scientific accounts of unique environments affected by water, fictional stories, and dreams coexisting to enhance the meaning of the others and blur the lines between reality and constructed images.
The accordions in this book play the role of visually and tactically echoing waves and folds in a shower curtain. When laying on the watercolor stained pillowcase the viewer changes his or her perspective to look across the peaks of the accordion so that the images on the opposite side become obscured as they extend and the emphasis on images and text changes similar to light and shadow on water plays with your vision.
Fall 2021
Mirror Pools
This body of work is cohesively defined by the nature of the female gaze in regards to traditional archetypal narratives such as myth and as a mirror to find images that form the foundations of a feminine unconscious. A memory that isn’t yours but feels like it should be
This collection of experiential monoprints is designed as a feminine interpretation of the myth of Narcissus. The vessels act as a portal for the audience to see themselves within the paradigm of the female gaze and to interact with them in a symbolic ritual.
When installed the bowls must be lovingly tended to, as over time the water evaporates and must be added to to maintain the illusion. This unseen maintenance of pouring into highlights the invisible work done by women for a greater community but that is also ultimately equally fulfilling and can allow herself to see herself more clearly.
To see ourselves in the water changes the narrative of being trapped by a mirror and all its preoccupations, especially as women, of fading youth and allows for freedom in the ability of water to change and transform and to be refilled. Our reflection in water becomes something not of exact replication, clarity, or authenticity but of multiple instances of intuitive recognition that are forever changing and rippling even if we can not physically see it.
Ba·sin
/ˈbās(ə)n/
Noun
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a bowl for washing, a wide, round open container, especially one used for holding liquid.
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See the Greek myth of Narcissus and The Source
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An area of land where all flowing surface water converges to a single point, such as a river mouth, or flows into another body of water, such as a lake or ocean.
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an enclosed area of water where vessels can be moored.
Claire Schmalzried, Mirror Pools, Lithography on laser etched acrylic in 8 bowls, 2020