Senior Exhibition (2012) — Walker Studios

Front cover: leather; white oak with stain, dye, and finish; pyrography.

Folio 1. No one could ever meet death for his country without the hope of immortality (Cicero). Hand-mixed ink, watercolor paint, gold and silver leaf.

Folio 39. This picture shows the first of three recurring text-page borders, created with watercolor paint and gold leaf.

Folio 45. This spread was designed for Oliver, one of the central knights in The Song of Roland.

Folio 45. Close up of border design.

Folio 53. This spread was designed for Roland. There is a true glory and a true honor which cometh from God and not from man... The glory of an integrity of principle, stronger than the sense of pain or the fear of death (Dabney).

Folio 178. This final spread includes visual elements from every border design and knot pattern throughout the manuscript.

Friesen Galleries, A Song of Glory, 2012. The pages mounted beside the manuscript depict the creative process that went into this project; the pages mounted behind are scans of folios throughout the book (provided as viewers were not permitted to touch artworks on display).

Kate: This is my undergraduate senior project, an illuminated manuscript of a Carolingian poem called The Song of Roland. It was exhibited at the Friesen Galleries in April 2012, as pictured above.

This project was a labor of love--several loves, actually--a love of art, a love of history, and a love of books. In early medieval times, books were prized far more than they are today. Indeed, medieval scribes, illuminators, and bookbinders viewed books as having the same importance as the stories they contained: they understood that the presentation of a text spoke as loudly as the text itself. I have therefore endeavored to capture that same devotion and respect for stories and books through the making of this manuscript. I designed every page layout, knot pattern and border design to not only reflect early medieval styles in general, but to embody the story of Roland specifically.

Oak wood; wood stain, dye, and finish; leather; watercolor paper; watercolor paint; gold and silver leaf; ink; pyrography; beeswax; hemp cord. 2011-2013.

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