TWO WINTERS LONg

Specifications

  • 6" X 7"
  • 168 PAGES
  • TRIPLE RUBBERBAND BINDING ALLOWING LOOSELEAF PAGES TO BE RECONSTRUCTED IN YOUR OWN SEQUENCE
  • UNIQUE MYLAR COVER W/ HAND-DRIPPED MELTED MULTI-COLOR WAX ON FRONT AND ARTIST EMBOSSMENT ON BACK
  • PRINTED USING SPECIALLY DEVELOPED DRUM & TONER TECHNIQUES TO BLEED OUT EXTRA BLACK INK, MIMICKING THE LOOK OF AN OLD, WORN MAGAZINE
  • FULL BLEED LAYOUT W/ MULTIPLE HAND-CUT EDGES
  • OVER 155+ B&W PHOTOGRAPHS EXCLUSIVE TO THIS VOLUME
  • SIGNED, STAMPED AND NUMBERED BY THE ARTIST
  • FIRST EDITION OF 100 + 5 APs

Description

Completed in sequence in early 2016, Two Winters Long is Jason Jaworski’s most recent published photographic project, comprised entirely of images created within the 2015 winter season. Originally begun as a separate project while the artist was working in Cambodia teaching art at an NGO to orphans, the images were soon collected and sequenced together with others created at different locations from the artist’s winter travels including New York, Los Angeles, Tijuana, San Francisco, San Ysidro, Oahu and Scranton. Relating to the multiple losses of life the artist endured over the winter season, the title, Two Winters Long, serves to engage in the aspect of time and how one winter in Cambodia bled into multiple others at different locales- a sort of season of memory and the simultaneous burden and relief that comes with the loss of life. Threaded throughout the entire project is a longing from someone acknowledging the knowledge only understood when one has endured enough- a melancholy knowing that love, although infinite in its intangible manner, is only a fraction of the physical- that thing which will always expire, no matter how enduring a person’s own enigma of life is.

An artist book produced to accompany the project was shown in the Focus Photography section at The Geffen Contemporary at MOCA in Los Angeles, with a signing and NY launch for the publication due at MoMA PS1 for Printed Matter's NY Art Book Fair at Booth N10 on September 17th, 2pm. A 168-page publication with over 155 images, a drawing and text, the book’s cover is especially important to the project; each one is unique, featuring hand-dripped melted multicolor wax from prayer candles the artist acquired from multiple funerals he attended over the 2015 winter season, the wax representing the displacement of time between the artist’s subjects and the printed product, candles being one of the oldest forms used to measure the distance of a day along with the hour glass and the sun’s light. Each dot of wax is meant to fall off over time with the book's use, resembling the experience the artist had while holding a candle during a wake and funeral procession.  

The book is now available for purchase in limited quantity through the artist's publishing site SSK Press.

A review of the book by Olga Yatskevich on Collector Daily can be found here.

Artist TEXT

There are few instances where I’m able to remember a moment completely. 
Following the rain, naming droplets and tracing their traces from a few miles up in the air, flying across hemispheres and different continents, the contents of which pique my interest in oblique ways but are soon forgotten as I spot another. 

The plane readies itself to land. I sit back, looking past the fuselage of a room I’ve occupied for the past sixteen hours, staring at the buildings moving by outside, orange and silent, waves of moonlight articulating shadow movements as if each window were breathing, while sighs and intermittent sounds can be heard swarming four rows in front of me. I collect my bags and settle into the deep heat outside; my first time in Cambodia, winter in Phnom Penh. 

Months into the season now, crisscrossing back and forth between New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco and Scranton. Everything in recollection spins by like a zoetrope, the images blurring and bleeding into one another, events anchored in my memory, however unreliable, but relayed in a breath: teaching all those kids in Cambodia things I’m still learning, coming across a body beaten close to death in the street, navigating flooded forests, fishing towns and jungles, seeing the strongest person I know break down in a hospital hallway, running toward a suicide jumper above the Tonle Sap river, holding a hand smaller than your finger, waiting for a child to open his eyes, praying he will but knowing he won't, afterward hiking through Griffith Park and barely being strong enough to say goodbye. And yet, I keep moving, walking further, submerged under the weight of an ancient waterfall, running through a slum with hundreds of balloons and fireworks, riding scooters in the rain through a mountain in Hawaii, screaming in tunnels while going 50mph no hands on the throttle, feet dragging on the floor and sparks flying around with not a car in sight; 5am no sleep just dreaming, and the last night in Oahu staring at the sky turn from a dark black to a crimson red on an anonymous morning while others were snoring, the ocean breathing outside the window while I thought of nothing and no one but you. And I miss you more than ever, however many years later since I first met you, still walking, still running and still doing whatever it is I can to get back to you although now you’re no longer here and all the words have disappeared besides the one I don’t want to use to describe you: gone. 

*

In the border town where I grew up now, staring out the car as others pass by and over to the other side. They say it’s a new year but everything feels the same. Time no longer lingers in moments timeless but rather in constructions of what time’s left. Drove out here at night to arrive in the morning. Used to come here as a kid to throw paper airplanes over the fences and watch them fly by with Josh, Christian and Arturo gliding down toward Mexico. Kids... 

I lean out the edge of the car: a circus of cirrus dances slowly above me, moving against the earth. 
I take my shoes off, dig my toes into the ground, and start walking.

A dot of desert in the distance. 

- Jason Jaworski
2016

Artist Dedication

For Gloria who taught me to laugh, Rosie who taught me to love, and Rode who taught me to live.

Gloria C. Jaworski
December 23, 1932 - October 4, 2015

Rosalinda "Rosie" Choe
April 8, 2007 - November 25, 2015

Rode Antonio Montijo
December 11, 2015 - December 15, 2015

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