Celestial Navigation
Celestial Navigation
Pigment inkjet prints
6.75x5.75x.5" closed, 17.5x 30" open
Edition of 30, out of print.
Created 2008
At once vast and minimal, sparse and rich, the night sky has always been a canvas upon which people project their myths and dreams. In Celestial Navigation a photograph of the Milky Way provides the background for an illustrated catalog of instruments used across the ages to navigate by the stars, and a 19th-century astronomical chart.
This historical content is complemented by a brief poem in which the artist looks to the night sky to recapture the memory of a long lost beloved. Celestial Navigation is constructed of ink-jet printed, hinged triangles that can be held in the hand and read page by page like a traditional book. Unfolded flat, it references historical star charts or contemporary NASA composite photographs. The book can also be folded into myriad sculptural shapes. For our entire existence as a species, we have looked to the heavens. In the night sky we see possibilities, a map to our future, a document of our past.
The panorama of deep space comprises a powerful metaphor, and in two books ... the metaphor is used to ample effect both conceptually and structurally. Celestial Navigation and Star Poems share the same structure and compositional background: a series of hinged triangle with start fields printed on deep blue. Each may be read as a traditional accordion fold, formed into myriad sculptural configurations, or unfolded flat as a kind of map referencing historical and contemporary astronomical charts.
In Celestial Navigation, the narrative evokes a deep sense of loss and longing; reaching to the stars as a way of recapturing the memory of the long-departed: 'Like ancient navigators, I look to the sky to find my way back to you.' . The diamond-shaped page-spread offers text printed against a star field on the left, mirrored by a 19th-century star chart on the right. The one-point rhythm of each page spread progresses steadily, and is resolved by a final spread of uniform space in which one can almost discern the presence of the beloved. The book has three possible spaceways: the textual narrative occupying one path, and the other two taken up with lists of astronomical instruments - particularly instruments of navigation - juxtaposed against 17th-century images of astrolabes, sextants, telescopes, and the like. — Max Yela, Head, Special Collections, University of Wisconsin Milwaukee
