robbing time of time: a book of time for Eveningful

 

From the Getty Museum: “Manuscripts known as “books of hours” were among the most widely produced and used during the Middle Ages. These decorated prayer books … structured time for their readers (over a day, a year, and a lifetime) … [and] reveal an increasing demand for private and personalized … devotion.” While medieval books of hours drew heavily upon a Christian canonical tradition, Eveningful’s book of time reflects on the persistence of deliberation and meditation, and the power of various thresholds to regulate and free the self. 

 

Books of hours create a dynamic of display as a feature of privacy: a sense of privileged access. But what is time, when not marked entirely personally? When the subject is not at home or at work, but in social spaces: clubs, stores, parties? Eveningful’s book of time embroiders that ritual quality—of the book, and of its sense of progression through a sequence of time. Eveningful’s meditation on time invites the reader’s active participation in a very human rhythm: opening ourselves up to another’s vulnerability, a process we’re lucky to move through again and again—like day melding into night.

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This book of time features watercolors commissioned for Eveningful, by artist Elizabeth Fuller. See the gallery page for these paintings here.