Even the Apple is an artists' book and sculptural installation connecting our families' histories to cycles of perishability in food production and urban development.
Structure of the Book
Referencing the meticulous packaging of mail order fruit gift boxes, the book consists of six vellum sheets wrapping apples nested in a foam bed. Beneath the foam bed lies a 16-page book on Japanese papers which evoke the tissue used in fruit packaging.
The Box
The cherry wood and glass lidded box contains the book. Within the box is a removable 2" foam layer die-cut to nest six apples wrapped in printed vellum. Beneath that layer is a second layer of foam with a cutout for a 16-page unbound book.
Overall dimensions: 16" x 13" x 7"
Materials: two cherry wood boxes, glue, glass.
(box fabricated by Navillus Woodworks)
The Book in the Box
The 16-page unbound book nestling under the foam is a sheaf of 16 black-and-white photo-inkjet prints on fine papers. The book is unbound to allow for its readers to re-sequence pages as they please.
The book's text pages include poems and graphics that explore perishability through the lenses of apples, hotels, cities, and our ancestral histories. The book includes versions of the graphic poems "The Radial Model" and "Cultivation Cycles in a Metropolitan Area."
Dimensions: 9 1/2" x 12 7/8"
Paper: Hiromi Niyodo Kozo 25g — an archival Japanese rice paper coated for printing.
The Stand
To accompany the book at our EXPO Chicago installation, we designed an apple stand. The piece shows how display is a way to examine the relationship between nature and designed objects. We were thinking about apples as designed objects, their similarities to cities (core, exterior), and their display as a way of manipulating and controlling nature. The patterning of the apples in the foam bed was determined by laying topographic maps along the stand and following the bodies of water.
(stand fabricated by Building Brown Workshop).