Art I like - Linda Ekstrom

California artist Linda Ekstrom seems to have used a lot of Bibles in her work - she has tangled them -

and balled them up -

and done other things, like coating in ink-

"In my work," she says, "word is central, as related to the body, and to space and memory ... My work is anchored in the book, the book as a cultural and a symbolic object, and as a container of history, narrative and memory. The Bible, as the primary book of Western culture and central to my tradition, is the book I alter and transform into sculptures. One understanding of these altered Bibles draws from the Jewish tradition’s long use of Midrash, the interpretive mode which breaks down the scripture into phrases, then words, then letters to uncover meaning." She concludes: "Cultural forms, like text and art, can bring the sacred into cognitive recognition where we encounter and hold mystery in relation to our bodies in time and space, where we can recollect and interpret that which we have experienced."