Meg Madison Artist Statement

THE STREAM OF LIFE

“…the now-instant, which is so fleeting it no longer is because it has already become a new now-instant, which also is no longer.”
- from The Stream of Life, Clarice Lispector

Madison’s project THE STREAM OF LIFE culls the present from her own forgotten black and white snapshots. The moments in the past become the present as the photographer chooses them, and as the viewer looks at them. The past is a shadow on the moment of the viewing. The photographs are hand sewn with linen thread to the paper creating lines with a cottony-cushy visual quality.

The STREAM OF LIFE is a series of pictures as well as a limited edition artist book inspired and a meditation on the words of Clarice Lispector. Lines, crosswalks, sidewalk cracks, or road surface markings present in each image unify the photographs. The pathway is a trace of the past in the present while pavement markings are lines of control separating moments as well as people. The photographs are hand sewn to the book pages creating additional lines of thread on the images, and interspersed with letterpress prints of text lines from Lispector’s THE STREAM OF LIFE. The lines of control and civilization are punctuated with Lispector's quotes of the “now-instant”, the “want to capture the present” and the desire “ to capture my is.”

THE STREAM OF LIFE is a limited edition artist book.
Book Description:
Edition of 10
Los Angeles 2005
Twelve silver gelatin prints , photographs by Meg Madison, are hand sewn with linen thread on Stonehenge paper and interspersed with five quotes on from the novel “The Stream of Life” (Agua Viva) by Clarice Lispector, Translated by Elizabeth Lowe & Earl Fitz, University of Minnesota Press1989. The quotes are letter pressed on Stonehenge paper in Univers type and printed at Lab Press, Otis College of Art & Design. Each page is hinged with linen and bound with black canapetta book cloth made in Italy in binding designed by Charlene Matthews. There is one HC and & 9 in the edition. 2 with slipcase currently available.