We saw them everywhere: the dragonish clouds, the roaring vapors, the faces in the sky. We found them in tea leaves, in spilled milk, on the unsuspecting canvases of our grilled cheese.
So much hides in an inkwell. We invited its contents out, dripping the unknown essences onto our waiting pages. We folded, pressed, and looked, and there they were, looking back. It comforted us somehow, to contain them, this bestiary of the invisible, the known unknowns.
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Inspired by the blotograms of Justinus Kerner (1786-1862), made “decades before the Rorschach test laid claim to this form” as well as John Prosper Carmel’s “Bottentots and How to Make Them” (1907)––both of which are described in this article on inkblot books. And, of course, by the cloud-faces.