"Coming of Age"
"Coming of Age"
Title: “Coming of Age”
Dimensions: 30” x 20.5”
Medium: Mixed media (washi paper and acrylic on book binder board, with selected book pages)
“Coming of Age” is the first installation of Juliet’s Life Through Books series, as seen in Sandy Spring Museum’s “A Paean to Paper,” curated by Holly Stone and Sonya Michel and featured in The Washington Post.
Life Through Books celebrates the fictional lives we lead through the written word. From infancy to adulthood, we develop memories through language committed to paper. Empathy for the characters within draws us into experiences in different worlds, times and cultures. These vicarious journeys often remain with us, binding us to other readers and informing our perspectives in our own lives. These artworks illustrate the development of the fictional experience, beginning with a foundation of picture books. As we learn to associate letters with meaning, we embark on a lifetime of surrogate growth. The pages folded into the roots of the tree in “Coming of Age” are representative of this foundation. As the artwork proceeds upward, the folded pages evolve into early readers, followed by elementary chapter books, juvenile fiction, young adult novels, and adult fiction. Excerpts from these books were specifically chosen to represent a significant character, moment or idea within the written work; the selections are simultaneously an homage to the author, and a wink and a nod to the reader.
A list of the titles and authors used in the Life Through Books series will accompany this artwork.
