Continua

Katie Murken

Continua (Columns 2, 4, 17, 21, 8, and 13)

Phone books and pigment dye

Each 8.5” x 7.5” x 8’

2011

$4,000 each

I created Continua between 2009-2011 when I was living in Center City, Philadelphia.I had just completed my MFA in Book Arts when I started to notice the telephone books that were left on stoops and sidewalks throughout the city.The books were exposed to intense changes in weather and began to warp and curl, creating patterns that resembled the geological stratifications of the land.I fell in love with these cast-off objects and their capacity to speak as a visual metaphor for the land and the changes it undergoes over eons of time.I wanted to create something that transformed these objects into an artifact that testifies to human existence in a specific place and time, each printed name becoming a layer in a larger continuum of evolution. Rather than emphasizing the names, I used color to represent the individual in relationship to the whole.Each individual page and color contributes to a larger pattern that tells a story of human experience and our interconnectedness to each other and to the earth we inhabit.