The Clairvoyant Atom

The illustration of the Clairvoyant Atom comes from an alchemical text. It figured heavily in several spreads in this book. I was intrigued by the mysticism of alchemy--the alchemist's faith that there exists a single key that would unlock the solution to life's deepest mysteries. The spirals of energy remind me of tightly coiled strands of DNA. I like the elegance of using the atom--the soul of matter--as a metaphor for the heart--the soul of life. I also simply liked the heart shape. It's attractive and elegant.

 

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The Clairvoyant Atom

 

The illustration of the Clairvoyant Atom comes from an alchemical text. It figured heavily in several spreads in this book. I was intrigued by the mysticism of alchemy--the alchemist's faith that there exists a single key that would unlock the solution to life's deepest mysteries. The spirals of energy remind me of tightly coiled strands of DNA. I like the elegance of using the atom--the soul of matter--as a metaphor for the heart--the soul of life. I also simply liked the heart shape. It's attractive and elegant.

 

For this project, I altered the color of the image, printed it, then created a transfer using acrylic gloss gel. I adhered the transfer with more gel, which made the paper buckle. Because the transfer was in the center of the spread--crossing the spine--the only way to relieve some of the buckling was to cut away the outer portions of the two pages. I also cut away the two underlying pages and glued the upper pages to them to give them weight and stability. I didn't like the raw edges, so I bound them with copper wire and added embroidery stitching. The copper wire echoes the spirals in the drawing.

 

To allow for the thickness of the wire loops, I cut out a shallow niche around the center diamond shape. Unlike the pages of most niches, which are glued together to form a solid block, these are loose, allowing the pages of the niche to turn freely over the embedded element.