Starry Spirals
© 2025
Edition of unique artists book
Dimensions in inches (closed): 8.4 x 6.65 x 1.6
Materials
Book: museum board, paper, acrylic, mica, paper, oil based relief printing ink, watercolor fusion foil, hot foil, acrylic screen printing ink, palladium leaf, silk thread
Box: book board, book cloth with surface applied metal pigment in polymer base, paper, sterling silver, goat, silver leaf, hot foil, aluminum oil paint, fusion foil
Eight rigid modified keystone shaped pages, with translucent text overlays, joined in an accordion with a stab-binding variation. The pages present both visual and text based celebrations of the night time sky. Four panels have an additional layer of translucent paper (these pages hold the main text. The four panels without the text overlay present the names and graphic depictions of the four major constellations mentioned in the text (Ursa Major, Orion, Cassiopeia, Ursa Minor) The back side of the panels present a six-step word that begins with 'Starry' and ends with ' Spiral.
Housed in a custom drop spine box with keystone shaped tray. The leather (goat) case has cut out holes in the shape of the four above mentioned major constellations through which shine glimmers of silver leaf. The goat is surface treated with metallic oil paint and hot foil. Two peg/strap closures on the box fore edge. The closures are crafted from strips of leather and hand formed sterling silver pegs.
Full text:
Starry spirals
Lying on my back, staring up the sky on a clear and moonless night, I seem to lose myself in the starry skies of the Milky Way galaxy. Concrete thoughts give way to imagination. I imagine Ursa Major, Orion, Cassiopeia and Ursa Minor each following their appointed path in a grand spiral; the sky a vast codex written in luminous script, ever turning its pages.
Is the universe a spiral? One whose beginning
is beyond reach
and whose end perpetually recedes?
What if within each constellation lie countless spiral galaxies,
each containing millions of
stars spinning in pinwheels
in the void, arranged in
patterns that mirror
our own galaxy?
Perhaps the ancients knew that the precession of the equinoxes was not merely an astronomical phenomenon but a cosmic library, where every 26,000 years the catalog of pole stars completes itself and begins anew.
What we call Vega was their Polaris; what we call the past may yet prove to be our future’s present.
I imagine that, were I to live for 26,000 years, I would see the great spiral of precession complete itself; watch as Vega becomes the pole star and the constellations slowly migrate across the seasons. But I have only this moment,
this single revolution of the cosmic wheel, to glimpse the pattern of the spiral that began before memory and will continue long after forgetting.
Perhaps the universe is that library dreamed by Lucretius, where every possible arrangement of stars has been, is, and will be written. If so, then somewhere in the spiral arms of a galaxy we cannot name, beings study constellations that spell out, in their alien script, this very meditation on spirals and the night.
Such imaginings exhaust me. I return to a state of admiration and wonder as dawn is heralded by
the lightening sky,
the stars vanishing
from view.
Word ladder (on back side)
Starry
Sparry
Sparky
Sparey
Spirey
Spiral
Starry Spirals
© 2025
Edition of unique artists book
Dimensions in inches (closed): 8.4 x 6.65 x 1.6
Materials
Book: museum board, paper, acrylic, mica, paper, oil based relief printing ink, watercolor fusion foil, hot foil, acrylic screen printing ink, palladium leaf, silk thread
Box: book board, book cloth with surface applied metal pigment in polymer base, paper, sterling silver, goat, silver leaf, hot foil, aluminum oil paint, fusion foil
Eight rigid modified keystone shaped pages, with translucent text overlays, joined in an accordion with a stab-binding variation. The pages present both visual and text based celebrations of the night time sky. Four panels have an additional layer of translucent paper (these pages hold the main text. The four panels without the text overlay present the names and graphic depictions of the four major constellations mentioned in the text (Ursa Major, Orion, Cassiopeia, Ursa Minor) The back side of the panels present a six-step word that begins with 'Starry' and ends with ' Spiral.
Housed in a custom drop spine box with keystone shaped tray. The leather (goat) case has cut out holes in the shape of the four above mentioned major constellations through which shine glimmers of silver leaf. The goat is surface treated with metallic oil paint and hot foil. Two peg/strap closures on the box fore edge. The closures are crafted from strips of leather and hand formed sterling silver pegs.
Full text:
Starry spirals
Lying on my back, staring up the sky on a clear and moonless night, I seem to lose myself in the starry skies of the Milky Way galaxy. Concrete thoughts give way to imagination. I imagine Ursa Major, Orion, Cassiopeia and Ursa Minor each following their appointed path in a grand spiral; the sky a vast codex written in luminous script, ever turning its pages.
Is the universe a spiral? One whose beginning
is beyond reach
and whose end perpetually recedes?
What if within each constellation lie countless spiral galaxies,
each containing millions of
stars spinning in pinwheels
in the void, arranged in
patterns that mirror
our own galaxy?
Perhaps the ancients knew that the precession of the equinoxes was not merely an astronomical phenomenon but a cosmic library, where every 26,000 years the catalog of pole stars completes itself and begins anew.
What we call Vega was their Polaris; what we call the past may yet prove to be our future’s present.
I imagine that, were I to live for 26,000 years, I would see the great spiral of precession complete itself; watch as Vega becomes the pole star and the constellations slowly migrate across the seasons. But I have only this moment,
this single revolution of the cosmic wheel, to glimpse the pattern of the spiral that began before memory and will continue long after forgetting.
Perhaps the universe is that library dreamed by Lucretius, where every possible arrangement of stars has been, is, and will be written. If so, then somewhere in the spiral arms of a galaxy we cannot name, beings study constellations that spell out, in their alien script, this very meditation on spirals and the night.
Such imaginings exhaust me. I return to a state of admiration and wonder as dawn is heralded by
the lightening sky,
the stars vanishing
from view.
Word ladder (on back side)
Starry
Sparry
Sparky
Sparey
Spirey
Spiral
