I write with dead people
Posted by Dan on Sep 20th, 2009
2009
Sep 20
Nadine Jarvis of the UK proposes to make pencils out of the remains of people who are cremated. There’s no order page, so I assume the pencils are still being beta tested.
Each pencil is foil stamped with the name of the person. Only one pencil can be removed at a time, it is then sharpened back into the box causing the sharpenings to occupy the space of the used pencils. Over time the pencil box fills with sharpenings - a new ash, transforming it into an urn. The window acts as a timeline, showing you the amount of pencils left as time goes by.
September 21st, 2009 at 6:08 am
It’s been done before, more or less. Some years back a company offered to load shotgun shells with birdshot mixed with ashes of your dear departed duck hunter, so s/he could have one last shot at the birds. You could also get the ashes sealed inside a plastic duck decoy suitable not for framing but floating.
This also reminds me of a project I did when I was in the Environmental Design Dept at Parsons. We had to produce an environmental sculpture of some kind- I disremember exactly what the parameters were.
Anyway, I came up with an earthwork spiral on a family farm. Every time a family member died, s/he would be buried on top of the spiral, one space further from the interior end, and an apple tree planted atop the grave to provide apples for the family. Over the centuries the spiral could grow, and so would the family orchard.
I pointed out that this would give a whole new meaning to ‘Granny Smiths’, but for some reason all the cutting edge intellectuals running things were totally and truly grossed out.
Some people are weird sometimes..