01 THE AESTHETICS OF THE INTANGIBLE



The Aesthetics of the Intangible

Installation
Mixed Media
2025


Under the overlapping glow of five handmade paper lanterns, viewers are invited to consider five primary themes—nostalgia, ephemera, glimmer, reverie, and fantasy. 

The three publications below offer an intimate moment of reflection, flowing from past (nostalgia) to present (glimmer) to future (fantasy). The Aesthetics of the Intangible does not aim to document or define these key concepts; rather, imagining each theme as a pebble, it tosses the pebble into a pond and captures its ripples. Ultimately, this design experience shares an opportunity for introspection on indecipherable topics that we often don’t have the time or space to consider in our busy day-to-day lives.






For the main publication, the central book placed under the glimmer lantern, I decided to try an experimental structure of mini booklets bound within a larger seven-spread accordion book. I designed the background imagery using my original photographs, overlaid the cut-out shapes and text, and spent an entire night in the studio x-acto knife cutting out all the little pieces and fighting with vellum and the printer and my brain to figure out how things would properly layer and align.


After figuring out the sewing logistics on a physical prototype mockup book, I bound together the mini booklets within each of the seven larger spreads. Once they were all bound, I glued the spreads of the accordion book together with PVA, and I handmade the paper used on the coveers by embedding the discarded cut-outs from the interior of the book between sheets of cotton in the paper studio. 

Finally, I built a series of custom book cradles using 4-ply mat board to construct the archival supports for the installation. 



© 2025