This series of two sided works on paper is a collaboration with writer Sam Anderson. He responded to Melissa McGill’s public art project, Constellation, with typewritten quotes and original pieces. McGill marked the typewritten pages with graphite, pastel, watercolor, Sumi Ink, and charcoal. Then, punching out the periods, punctuation, pauses and/or spaces in the written works with a Japanese hole punch, she created new constellations, illuminated when light shines through the pages. All are 8″ w x 11″ h.
The following series of works on paper are one sided works on paper. Sam Anderson’s typewritten work is shown in the title beneath each image.
The ruin of Bannerman’s castle.
Is like the shell of a crustacean.
It changes color, depending.
In the rain it looks red.
Often it looks mud brown.
2016, Pastel, graphite and charcoal on typewritten paper.
A rain dance.
A void dance.
No island research of any kind.
No island of any kind.
No island.
No research.
From now on I will only know what I know now.
I know now:
avoidance.
managing intervals.
not body.
turtling.
misdiagnosis.
no island of any kind.
west coast.
east coast.
“on top of things”
‘time is a caucasian thing’
“human among humans”
2016, Pastel, ink, graphite and charcoal on typewritten paper.
Major stars in the river Constellation (a rough map)
Cursa, Keid, Beid, Zaurak, Rana, Azha, Angetenar, Thelmin, Acamar, Archernar
(at the end of the rive: the 10th brightest star in the sky)
(7 times the mass of the sun)
2016, Pastel on typewritten paper
Eridanus (a-RID-a-nuss)
The river constellation
Eridanus Supervoid—
The largest structure ever identified by humans is the Eridanus Supervoid: a space in which there should have been 10,000 galaxies but instead there was nothing. It is inexplicably cold, large & empty. It was discovered by people on the small warm island of Maui. “It’s like the Everest of voids. “ – The Cosmos News. “The super-void appears to be roughly spherical though it’s internal structure may be more complex, containing smaller voids & filaments. “- Sky Telescope. The supervoid is about 900 million light years across.
///Cosmic Microwave Background
Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe
Integrated Sachs-Wolfe Effect ///
2016, Pastel, graphite, Sumi Ink, metal powder on typewritten paper
B. *M*
Perhaps in an ambulance, certainly a vehicle of some kind. The truth is I don’t know how much, the within, all that inner space one never sees, the brain & heart & other caverns where thought & feeling dance their Sabbath. I crouched like Belaqua, or Sordello, I forget. But that ius not, I mean my hand, what I wish to speak ofnow, everything in due course. Constipation is a sign of good health in Pomeranians. Yes, it was an orange Pomeranian, the less I think of it the more certain I am. And yet. Let me try and explain. What I need now is stories, it took me a long time to know that, & I’m not sure of it. To restore silence is the role of objects. I am still alive then, that may come in useful. And I, what was I doing there, and why come? These are things we shall try and discover. But these are not things we must not take seriously.
I can’t believe it.
No, I will not lie. I can easily conceive it. Let me hear nothing of the moon, in my night there is no moon, and if it happens that I speak of the stars it is by mistake. A & C I never saw again. I know how to summon these rags to cover my shape. I wonder what that means. It was a chainless bicycle, with a free-wheel, if such a bicycle exists. Dear bicycle, I shall not call you a bike, you were green, like so many of your generation, I don’t know why. To describe it at length would be a pleasure. This should all be re-written in the pluperfect. What a rest to speak of bicycles and horns. Unfortunately, it is not of them I have to speak, but of her who brought e into the world, through the hole in her arse if my memory is correct. First taste of the shit, the awful cries of the corncrakes. We were so old, she and I, she had had me so young, that we were like a couple of old cronies, sexless, unrelated, with the same memories, the same rancours, the same expectations. She never called me son, fortunately, I couldn’t have borne it, but Dan. I don’t know why, my name is not Dan. I called her Mag because for me, without my knowing why, the letter g abolished the syllable Ma, and as it were spat on it, better than any other letter would have done, the Countess Caca, a few niggardly wetted goat-droppings every two or three days. The room smelt of ammonia, oh not merely of ammonia, but of ammonia, ammonia. I forgive her for having jostled me a little in the first months and spoiled the only endurable, just endurable, period of my enormous history, if ever I’m reduced to looking for a meaning for my life, you can never tell, it’s in that old mess I’ll stick my nose to begin with, the mess of that poor old uniparous whore and myself the last of my foul brood, neither man nor beast. I was out of sorts. They are deep, my sorts, a deep ditch, and I am not often out of them. That’s why I mention it. I managed somehow, Being ingenious. And suddenly I remembered my name . Molloy .
They paid no attention to me and I repaid the compliment. Then how could I know they were paying no attention to me, and how could I repay the compliment, since they were paying no attention to me? I don’t know. I knew it and I did it, that’s all I know. These are all sentences I underlined in the first 23 pages of Samuel Beckett’s novel *Molloy*. SA
2016, Sumi Ink and metal powder on typewritten paper with a second piece of paper mounted behind the top layer, coated with silver metal dust, which shines through the punched holes.