Holes

I've been trying to put together a sketchbook project based on holes. This was inspired by a quote from Henry Moore:

"A hole can itself have as much shape-meaning as a solid mass"

I started off by looking for holes and photographing them and the book then became very photo-dependent. I should really try to wean myself off photos and make myself draw.

sketchbook cover

The cover has a grid of holes cut through it (boy, was that difficult to do) and then slide cases stuck over the top, each with something holey trapped inside it.

first page

The first page is supposed to be trompe l'oeil (a phrase my mother used to torment my granny with as a teenager, making her say it over and over again and laughing at her French accent...). It's a photo of a hole but... it's also a real hole that goes right through the book. This has really been the downfall of the whole thing, I think, as every subsequent page has a hole in it now. The idea is to make an image on each page regardless. Doesn't quite work, I fear. The hole gets in the way too much. I don't like the wriggly brown sludge I've painted in at the bottom...

The first few pages consist of photos with all the spaces scalpelled out and interacting with each other.

But I've kind of ground to a halt with it. As with everything else recently. I've really lost my mojo, which makes me sad.
     I do love this photo of leaves all bitten away by the little shiny green bugs that have infested them.

But it was when I was busy scalpelling away at all the holes that the realisation came to me that cutting out the holes wasn't enough. The process wasn't transforming the photo or making it into anything else. If anything, it was diminishing the effect of the holes. That's when the whole -- hole! -- thing ground to a halt.