recomp by Byopia Press
"'recomp' is a collaboration with a colony of bald-faced hornets. The accordion 'abstract', made from some of the pages left after the hornets had used some of the original book decomp for their nest/hive/ The little booklet in the case gives a short history of the project."
Books on Books: Bookmaking Book Art – On the Origin of the Species: “Book artist, papermaker and co-founder with her husband David Miller of Byopia Press, Cathryn Miller reviewed Decomp in 2013. If not prompted by Skinner’s preface, Miller must have felt how appropriately evolutionary it would be to attempt to replicate the Decomp experiment by substituting the result of that experiment for the subject of the replicating experiment. Thus, in January 2014, Miller nailed to a tree ‘a book based on letting brand new copies of On the Origin of Species rot in various locations’.
“For over twenty months, Miller monitored and husband David photographed the book’s weathering. That, however, was not the transformation that would result in an altered book and possibly a work of book art. Nature had some ironic appropriateness in store for Miller, Skinner, Collis, Scott and all of us. The blown pages were visited by Bald-faced Hornets, who digested them á la John Latham and his students but regurgitated them as cellulose with which to build a large nest.
“In 2015, Miller presented the results as ‘recomp’ in her blog at Byopia Press. In September that year, however, critics (raccoons, the artist thinks) visited the work and deconstructed it.” - Cathryn Miller
Links to Miller’s blog entries for the making of “recomp” :
Processes, Dimensions, and Edition Information
By Cathryn Miller
Saskatchewan, Canada: 2014, Byopia Press. One-of-a-kind.Altered book (Decomp: Stephen Collis/Jordan Scott, Coach House Books, Toronto, 2013). Housed in box with hornet’s nest adhered to bottom interior. Top interior has pocket with accordion pamphlet slipped in. Covers with collaged scraps of original book with the panels covered in Thai mulberry paper. Frame edges covered in a grey Japanese paper —the back of a patterned paper— and bands of paper from the hornets’ nest. Comb from the heart of the hornets’ nest mounted on a covered piece of light weight book board then mounted inside the back panel. Title from a bit of nest paper and a bare section of a page from Decomp and then glued to the front panel.