Full Circle

Description:	Title from portfolio box.Library has copy no. 9 signed by the artist.Issued as a rotating wheel in a silk-covered box.A spinning wheel — that the reader controls and rotates — suggests a clock, or progressive stations along some journey. The contents of the book are viewed by turning a wheel and pausing whenever text and image are centered in 4 windows. At 3 intervals a drawer lines up with the opening in the front of the box. Pulling a tab reveals a tongue-like 3-dimensional diagram of the mind and heart in relation to each other.The subject? The clue is on the face of the top of the box: an array of intersecting circles hold phrases like Things I was told to believe in, Things I would like to believe in, Things I used to believe in. Full Circle is about belief, or more pointedly, about cycles of belief.As the wheel moves from stage 1 to stage 12 (12 stations?), the windows offer four different ways we can chart belief: a single word, objects, the image of a body ppart, a sentence. At station 1 are the single word INQUIRY, some tear-shaped egg-like objects, the image of a closed mouth, and the sentence I look for you but you will not speak to me. At each stage the windows have new content. At each stop connections between the windows are left up to the reader. And, as the stages progress, so is the developing story. Full Circle demonstrates that the cycle of belief is the same for all, but different in the particulars.Over and over, Chens works have a foundation of social connection. Early in her career, the connection was in collaboration with others. Lately, her works have insisted on reader/viewer participation, directly as in Personal Paradigms or now indirectly as in Full Circle. Is it about how belief intersects with human relationships? Is it looking at religious belief?When queried, Julie Chen wrote, the text if purposefully ambiguous about whether the main reference is religion or relationship. Its not exactly about either, but more about the daily cycles of belief that we go through all the time without even realizing it, but that make life bearable. Things such as believing that we will never get seriously ill or lose our jobs—cant happen to me, right? We dont actually have any control of these things, and have to rely on faith to not be swallowed up by anxiety all the time. The objects in the window arent meant to have deep meaning in relationship to the text. Rather, they are like talismen, reminders or lucky charms — place markers for belief. I chose them because I liked the intuitive connections which are not easily explainable. I like the idea that viewers are searching for their own ideas of what the objects might mean.The experience of Full Circle is the practical gloss on the bleak view — I cant go on, I go on — Beckett presented to the world 50 years ago in Waiting for Godot. Full Circle acknowledges the presence of ambiguity in our lives, but, most wonderfully, demonstrates that ambiguity and delight can co-exist.Julie Chens bookworks have always been lucid without being transparent, accessible without being simplistic. Her recent works, most pointedly True to Life and now Full Circle, offer evidence that memory is fluid and that getting though the day (and the night) calls for belief and the suspension of belief in an ongoing--Vamp & Tramp Booksellers (accessed May 30, 2018).
Origin:	2006
Created By:	Chen, Julie
Publisher:	Berkeley, Calif. : Flying Fish Press, 2006.
Source:	http://iuidigital.contentdm.oclc.org/cdm/ref/collection/BookArts/id/202
Collection:	Herron Library Fine Press and Book Arts Collection
Rights:	http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/
Copyright:	In Copyright
Subjects:	Chen, Julie Artists books--California. silk-covered box, paper

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