works by Elżbieta Wójcik-Leese
Essence Press has published one artist’s book by Elżbieta Wójcik-Leese.
convers(at)ion: sea fog chalk
Folded irregular double-sided concertina object | h 90mm x w 180mm (folded) 580mm extended; printed inkjet | with sumi-e insert | supplied in a envelope; h 110mm x 220mm | 2024 | £25 | purchase at launch price £20
Elżbieta Wójcik-Leese writes:
Grey on white in marine blue. In the shallow seas enveloping the Earth in the geological time we call the Cretaceous (130-60 million years ago), miniature marine creatures were shedding their shells. Billions upon billions of these tiny globes of lime and silica drifted to the sea bottom. Over millions of years, they compounded into thick chalk. During the Ice Ages, frozen seas levelled and lifted sedimentary rocks. About 12,000 years ago a retreating glacier upthrust a chalk deposit into the 128-metre-high cliff we know as Møns Klint, part of the ancient chalk seabed connecting Ireland, cliffs of Dover, Germany, Denmark and southern Russia.
As a regular visitor to Møns Klint and the Møn Unesco Biosphere, Denmark, I have translated the Earth’s epic of sediment accumulation and erosion into a hand-size poem and a print made with chalk and Baltic seawater. Møn’s weathers and rocks have been condensed by Julie Johnstone of Essence Press into an artist’s book. In your hands now: our geological and environmental past, present and future. Fog on chalk in sea.
This bookwork will be launched at the Small Publishers Fair, October 25-26 2024.
Elżbieta Wójcik-Leese is a multilingual poet, literary translator, researcher, accredited coach and book artist. Her site-specific verbal and visual texts use botanical inkmaking, cyanotype, pinhole photography, expressive handwriting, printmaking, stop-motion animation. As a Fulbright scholar, she researched at the Elizabeth Bishop Papers, Vassar College. She co-curates and runs ‘Transreading’ courses on translocal and hybrid poetries for the Poetry School in London. She currently tutors creative, environmental and research writing at the University of Copenhagen and is a ‘creative ambassador’ for the Møn UNESCO Biosphere. IG: @elzbietawojcikleese