MAIN - PROCESS - BIOGRAPHIES - ORIGINAL ARTWORK

PROCESS

• Day Recalls was designed so that the viewers could explore their own memory.
• Exploration of memory played a major part in the creation of the project.
• The collaboration was interactive rather than simply response oriented.

The collaborative process began with Osman writing a poem each evening consisting of fragments of experiences from that day. She emailed it to Osborne upon completion. At the end of each day Osborne read and reread the new poem in an attempt to memorize it. The next day she jotted down the lines that she could remember and used those words as the text for that day's mark making. This process continued for ten poems.

Osborne’s artwork is text-based and utilizes elements of chance and intention. She abstractly writes text with tools ranging from small handmade brushes to mops and brooms, from syringes to batiking tools. The mediums in this project include sumi ink, shellac and watercolors. The images in the book developed simultaneously rather than one image in response to each poem: memory is a cumulative experience which separates into days.

Osborne created the book as a portfolio of ten unbound sheets printed five-color offset on acid-free translucent vellum with additional marks stamped in oil-based etching ink. A major intent of the project was to question the collaborators’ and the viewer’s assumptions about memory. The translucency of the rearrangable sheets provides metaphors for 1) how each day's experiences partially obscure the previous day's happenings, and 2) how experiences become the filter through which we interpret future experiences.

The viewer is invited to share observations, realizations about memory, such as one person’s observation that the suede tape binding the portfolio reminded him of the string around the finger as a means to remember.