Seeing Red

Featured in the SMFA Print and Paper Exhibition (2025)

A book of handmade paper. Pages are arragned in a color gradient from light peach to pearl, pink, red, brown and to black and back. The whole book considers the deterioration of the eye through age and/or disease. Circles are cut at the center of a page and are cut smaller and smaller with each successive page to mimic the shape of the outer and inner parts of the eye. It requires the viewer to peer through the shrinking circles, straining to make sense, echoes the act of struggling to see.

The cycle restarts on a blank page—only the eye is now in worse condition with each new signature. This is meant to indicate that sometimes regeneration is not whole and that degradation is repetitive and persistent in nature. Found-objects such as red string and glossy fabric are embedded into the paper to indicate the loss of clarity and irritation of the eye. The book doesn’t just describe sight breaking down; it makes the reader feel that collapse in their hands, through shrinking apertures, obscured surfaces, and pages that resist being read.

Please contact me for a viewing of the whole book.