THE START OF SOMETHING - Stuart Dybek
Stuart Dybek is a master of the unexpected turn, the twist of surprise and the casual overturning of narrative convention. It was this very skill in taking the reader to a destination never so much as glimpsed at the outset of the story, that led to the commission of Dutch artist, Marion de Man. Her collages of short pencils with their jagged layouts pointing this way and that, seemed to match the twists in the narrative.
Marion’s brief was to produce a red pencil cover with a few odd coloured ones thrown into the mix. Marion supplemented the few she had with pencils from the Dutch public library and Ikea. Once they had been sharpened to size, it was as simple as pushing the pencils into the book’s format. Appropriate fonts were replicated, and the tone adjusted to make the type shine like foil.
Whilst visiting Marion in her studio in Amsterdam last week, it was amazing to discover that her pencil collages don’t exist as permanent pieces. Nothing is stuck down. They are always temporary, and swept away after they have been photographed. Her collection of pencils are all stub ends sharpened to a point by a knife. They are given to her by her artist husband, who obsessively draws with them until they almost don’t exist. Marion experiments with the pencil stubs, pushing them into squares and triangles, and then photographing them, under natural daylight to give them a softer edge.
In her studio she also has a large collection of beautiful paper, tickets, and notebooks. These too are frequently collaged together, photographed and put away.
The Start of Something is published by Jonathan Cape on 3rd November
