Annique Goldenberg

An unplanned Artist Book emerged as the project progressed. Materially, it consists of 17 sheets of paper, originally made as samples for each blend of pulp created. The samples grew in number to form a folio (pile of pages), a physical record of all the donated fabrics, texts, collected river water, and participants. This volume has emerged as an archive holding layers of meaning emanating from the fabrics and their associated stories, memories that live on in the paper sheets and contribute to the larger story of connection to River. In a symbiotic and chance convergence, it was discovered that the folio fitted perfectly inside the empty hymnal cover which had been stripped bare for the project, new content for the retired book.

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Each page of the book has a line of typeface along its outer edge, a brief description of the source of the pulp—not only the physical material but also the suggestion of a personal history evoked. Pinned to each page are swatches from the original cloth. Inside the old and many times repaired hymnal cover, the folio is wrapped in a sheet of river-paper; a miniature version of the full-size river-paper installed in the Cathedral. The book is secured with elastic bands and an attached typed label, a reference to the labels used to record the history of each jar of river water. In a final protective gesture, the book of memories is wrapped in a silk damask cloth, a napkin handed down through the generations and then donated to the project by the Cathedral archivist. This damask could not be used in the making of the paper pulp due to its silk content but has found its place within the project as the cloth to wrap and protect the resultant archival artifact.