37
Steve turned 37 this past weekend.
When I met him he had just turned 30.
He really does get better and better.
I made him a book about his garden.
In Anne Carson’s book Nox, there is a page where you see a specific but abstract pencil-drawn shape at the bottom of the page. Then you turn the page and you see a photograph and realize that the previous shape is a tracing of a piece of a photograph — the shadow of the photographer in the snow. It was infinitely more haunting than the shape or the photograph alone, or even if the photograph had been presented first and then the shape.
I made a small book for Steve based on that idea. I photographed the garden, then I would draw a piece of the photograph that I was drawn to. I presented the drawing first, then the photograph, again and again throughout the book. I used Blurb to print it. (I love that site! Why don’t I make books all the time?) Steve looked at the book with Jack, and it became a guessing game — try to guess based on the drawing what part of the garden I’m looking at.
