Studio Blog

The Otoya Scroll

In the Studio

The scroll is considered the first form of editable text (erasing on a clay tablet was impossible). Yet despite the scroll’s ancient origin and intervening centuries of neglect, it once again dominates information storage in the 21st Century through its virtual form on word processors and web browsers.

What is beautiful about a scroll, and what differentiates it from the codex form of a book, is its sequential access; it must be viewed in increments from beginning to end. The book displaced the scroll because of this limitation, but what a scroll offers that the book form doesn’t, is total access, which is achieved when it is fully unrolled. The photo above shows CE artist Bertha Otoya and her teacher, Victor Cartegena, displaying the full length of Otoya’s newly made scroll.

Writing is one of Otoya’s first loves, and she has carried it with her from her birthplace in Peru to the CE studio in San Francisco. Using source-texts from three languages, she has created a piece of illustrated writing consisting of non-linear juxtapositions from Orwell, Garcia Marquez, and many others. Otoya appropriates passages and re-inscribes them onto her scroll. The result is an amazingly complex collage of words that defies categorization and requires an imagination fluent in Spanish, English, and Italian to decode its mysteries.

She has inserted drawings of fish, chickens and portraits, inspired by the content of her source materials. Otoya then uses handmade stamps, printed with red ink, that seal the scroll as hers and add a light accent of color to the piece as a whole. The final step in her process will be a painted and inscribed wooden container where the scroll is to be stored, which will make the link between the 21st Century and the scribes of an earlier era complete.

# Posted by Will on April 15, 2009