Over the past two decades an interest in papermaking led me to build a large body of work based on the book form. One-of-a-kind traditional bindings and books as complicated sculptural structures. During that time, I also designed a major piece of public art now installed in the Cannon Center. The piece has a narrative presence and seeing it as a book gave me the vigor needed to accomplish the work.

All this has created a mighty tension in me. I have been moved into a place between illusionistic space and real space. Much like we live out our lives, between reality and illusion. Between truth and fiction.

My early paintings were/are illusions. The grass is not really waving in a gentle breeze. It, coupled with a viewers experience, just appears to wave. The house does not really have a resident but we see the TV antenna so we project a feeling of home into a space we can't see.

But the book takes up real space and deals with real time. You must engage it physically to complete the creative act. Real touch in the move to turn a page, the rattle of the paper to engage yet another sense. The smell of a book opened for the first time.

Simply to say, the book/Cannon experience has brought me to the stage where I am attempting to live in both worlds. A coming together, a joining.

It seems appropriate that the Cannon Center piece is named Confluence. It seems appropriate that the time has come for me to explore the notion that the two-dimensional illusion and three-dimensional reality may coexist in a creative whole.

Dolph Smith
Early 2008