So by now, if you've been keeping up, you'll know that among my many obsessions are spirals and helices and vortices. I don't know what it is about peering into the swirling abyss that fascinates me, or about the springiness of the forms, but there you go. I'm not the only one, either. Jennifer Khoshbin has used the form in a number of her altered book and paper arts projects 
in some really interesting ways. Her work reminds me of several other book and paper artists (Noriko Ambe, Jen Stark, Brian Dettmer and Thomas Allen, two of whom she directly cites as influences), but she puts her own, uh, twist on the idea.
There are two sets of book projects on her site, the first "Digging for Truth," includes the piece at right, "Ashes," with its layered vortex of words drilling down through the heart of a book, framed with the slowly disintegrating branches of a fern. The detail photograph reveals a swirl of words framing a single word on the bottom layer. Other works in the book project include pop-up sculptures of shadow-puppet hands, a Jen Stark-like picture of a little girl whose head is a circle of layers of colored paper framing the word "Begin." "Orbit" shows a young woman falling into another colorful layered vortex, and "T.M. Bita (too many balls in the air)" a pair of hands "juggling" six small carved vortices.
You see why I love these, don't you?
Khoshbin's second Book project, "Refarm Spectacle," undertaken in collaboration with philosopher Paul Lewis, carved 30 books in various ways and left them "on the sidewalks and alleyways of Houston Street, San Antonio, Texas" to be found by pedestrian passers-by. The lucky folks who found the books were treated to picture books and children's books whose characters literally leap off the page, like "Wondery Boo" at left, or appear at the ends of mysterious tunnels inside the books. How come the second-hand books I find are never this cool? Go visit Khoshbin's site and take a look at her newest projects.
Photos used with the artist's permission. © Jennifer Khoshbin
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