Book 28   Salvation Through Sacrifice. Penn, C. (2009) (Fig. 26). Salvation Through Sacrifice. Unique artist’s book from Jungian Dream Workshop with Estelle Hudson.  Compound fold binding, stitched pages. Mixed media including ink, water color, printing, digital prints. 16cm 12cm x8 cm high (closed).  Book 28.   Collection: Cheryl Penn.

I have attended the Garratt Artists group, run by Jeanette Gilks, for a little over a year.  Gilks decided to take a sabbatical and various members of the group have took over the Monday morning session.  This particular book came about as a result of a Jungian Dream Workshop which ran for four weeks.  The workshop was run by Estelle Hudson, a Jungian dream analyst.  The idea of the workshop was to choose a particular dream, paint it, draw it, analyze it, and then to put it all together into a book.

On the second last session we made clay sculptures of one or two images from the dream.   The sculptures, although never intended by Hudson to form part of the book, were made specifically to go on the cover.  I made flat relief sculptures so that all work done in the workshop could be included as part of the book.  This was definitely a cathartic process and the content was worked on in the sessions and during the weeks of the workshop.  It was finished in four weeks.

The binding of the book is complex and convoluted, with each page having to be opened or unfolded in some way in order to be read.  This refers to the complexity of dream work and the intricacy of the dream images which require time and effort to interpret. This concept is articulated in the way the reader  must  physically open out each page.