Mirror Cave

MIRROR CAVE (2014) is a collaborative artists’ book, designed by Erik Ruin and album by Madison/NYC-based duo Spires That In The Sunset Rise. The colorful 20-page offset printed booklet combines hand-drawn text, ink drawings and scratchboard elements in layered and unexpected ways.

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‘Mirror Cave’ is a conceptual album in 8 movements based on Italo Calvino’s short story ‘Sword of the Sun’ interspersed with excerpts from Shinkichi Takahashi’s ‘After-Images: Zen Poems.’ In a face-off with the ego, Palomar (Kathleen Baird) observes, reacts, contemplates, struggles and finally transcends how the “sword” of the sun’s reflection on the ocean always appears to stop exactly at his very own eye. Taralie Peterson represents some other dimension of reality—”the sensation that you are here but could not be here in a world that could not be but is.”