Lacuna…is a beautiful word I had never heard.
I like to say it aloud…it sounds to me like a tropical island!
It actually is a word used in connection with manuscripts, bones, and plants. It means missing pages or tiny empty spaces in the structure of bones and plants.
Essentially it is…unfilled space.
The idea of Lacuna…
keeps swirling around in my mind when I work on pin-talism pieces.
I start with a single pinhole punch on an absolutely blank piece of paper. Point by point…a pattern of tiny holes emerges.
It’s actually a kind of creative destruction. The gaps left behind from micro-damage to the paper are what transform it.
The word, Lacuna, seems to fit this work with its…way too many to count…tiny holes. Like a manuscript…it too is made of paper…even looking a bit like the color of bones after being sealed in encaustic wax.
Still, it’s really those “unfilled spaces” that intrigue me.
Tiny bits of “nothing” become something. You know…contemplating that whole idea of nothing as something…is one of those fun games my mind likes to swing around like some sort of zen yoyo at 3am…really it’s fun…try it ;)
Carl Sagan said at the beginning of his book The Varieties of Scientific Experience
“I stress that the universe is mainly made of nothing, that something is the exception. Nothing is the rule. That darkness is a commonplace; it is light that is the rarity. As between darkness and light, I am unhesitatingly on the side of light. But we must remember the universe is an almost complete and impenetrable darkness and the sparse sources of light, the stars, are far beyond our present ability to create or control.”
Ah!!! This mysterious universe we find ourselves swirling around in is made mostly of nothing! Unfilled space…like Lacuna This idea probably should make me feel some sort of bleak meaninglessness but it doesn’t.
(it’s more…you know…mind blown, in a good way:)
The piece in this post is an experimental piece…
I like to imagine it’s the “big bang” to the whole Lacuna Series that I already have in the works. I’ve been making stain from copper for it and I excited to telling you all about that in the future. It’s incredibly labor intensive. Going forward I’m definitely going to do straight edges…curves are complicated for the copper edging.
& I need to take lots of breaks from it to give my hands a rest…as they say “art takes the time it takes!”
Also, I want to give a BIG shout out to Kristen VonHohen at ArtFusion She is an amazing art collector & enthusiast who pointed me in the direction of the copper edging. I knew what I wanted I just didn’t know what I was looking for:) Thank you!!!
“Lacuna
[ luh-kyoo-nuh ]
1. a gap, or missing part, as in a manuscript, series, or logical argument; hiatus.
2. Anatomy. one of the numerous minute cavities in the substance of bone, supposed to contain nucleate cells.
3. Botany. an air space in the cellular tissue of plants.”
