Meg Bloom
Courtesy of the artist
Meg Bloom, The sound of bones, 2014. Handmade paper.
Remember the bodies exhumed from a massacre’s grave in El Salvador or the remains of one of Shakespeare’s kings found compacted beneath a parking lot, or the parchment skinned corpse preserved in an Danish bog. These sculptural objects by Meg Bloom are the fossils of our imagination, reduced to the tightness of bone and fragments of grave clothes. As if drawn by decay, the forms appear to twist in both space and time, recording both. But, made of paper, they are a fragile archive, conceivably refashioned from the remains of burned libraries, or the pages from file cabinets that fell through the 9/11 air.
Courtesy of the artist
Meg Bloom, Reaching for the moon, 2014. Handmade paper, expanded metal.
Their delicacy brings them into the realm of paradox, where such ephemeral materials are at the same time defiant of all the conditions which might erase them. As in the valley of dry bones described by the Old Testament prophet, it is possible to imagine these remains alive again. But then, that is always the artist’s gift.
Additional images and information about an upcoming exhibition of Bloom’s work are here.