Dominique Norville: “Paper Trail”

oPENING: 1st Saturday open studio / noon - 4pm

(or by appointment though the month)

In this increasingly digital and dehumanized world it can be hard to remember a time when paper was important. Words written (sometimes by hand) on a piece of paper were an integral way to communicate and impart information. From recipes to greeting cards, story books to government licenses, words on paper could tell us told us who we were, where we came from, and what to do now. Some papers are so immediately recognizable in and of themselves that even a small scrap can convey immediately their meaning and intent.

This series of collages celebrates technologies and forms of communication we might now think of as being quaint. It reflects a sense of history, and discarded ways of being. Old papers are now regularly being shredded and destroyed in huge quantities once they have been digitized, leaving these remnants with the tactile glow of what feels to me like ancient artifacts. Overlays of handmade loops and scribbles on top of these official documents are a reminder of cursive writing, another bygone relic in this time of shifting literacy.

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