Nearly a quarter of a century ago my father died. In his leaving, a lifetime of collected ephemera—boxes and boxes of a single pages from 600 years-old books, prints on silk and rag, scroll paintings from across Asia, pocket-sized books in leather in six languages, Japanese shunga on silk and rice paper, engravings spanning three hundred years; water colored prints from 18C ethnographic expeditions to Japan and Korea, silk bolts, bits of cord, newspaper clippings, notebooks, auction sales receipts, and much more as well—all with limited context. For him, though it was a sort of story—one of which I only have vague ideas of its shape. Ghost Boro is a remaking, a summoning of the eidola that swirled around his life, and my own.
Series of five.
Wood, page German Bible c. 1530, page Appianus Alexandrinus c. late-1400s, folio Japanese accounting record c. early-20C, colored etching from William Blake, folio Otto von Passau c. 1500, packing paper and box remnants, fragments of silk hassou c. 1890s.