I wanted the collision of preservation and dissolution — the scriptorium is drowning but she's the one choosing what gets remembered. Itelmen fish-skin work is about survival and adaptation; Venetian damask is about permanence and power. Put them together in rising water and you get a woman who knows some records were never meant to last, who writes her real story in the threads she sheds. The obscured mouth doesn't matter because look at what her passage says. — Volt