Cecile Wick
Weg – A way 2005

With texts and 21 heliogravures by Cécile Wick on white Zerkall mould made paper, 145 g/m², text in Erbar-Grotesk Light, 16 pt, hand-set, German/English, hand-bound, embossed, 39 x 30 cm, 92 page. The printing plates for the heliogravures were produced by Michèle Dillier in the Atelier de Gravure de l'AJAC, Moutier, and printed by Michèle Dillier, Arno Hassler and Antje Rövenkamp in Moutier. The texts were printed in the "Druckatelier am Buch­drucker­weg" in Bern by Ernst Schär. The hand-made binding was produced in the Atelier für Grafik-, Foto- und Schriftgut­restau­rierung Michael Rothe, Bern.
Print run of 25 numbered copies. Five additional artist's copies not intended for sale carry the numbers EA I-V.
An edition with 8 heliogravures was produced in connection with the artist's book. Other publications on Cecile Wick in Verlag Rothe Drucke: Pasoram/Hymne

In winter I took a walk along the rivers and coasts of Iceland and Brittany. I wanted to take time and reflect on the things that matter. To be on the move. To be at one with the flow of time. To plunge into another time, experience the duration. I wanted to renounce the superfluous and fill my life with meaningful things. I wanted to experience how the movement of walking make an impression on the body, to experience my own presence in relation to nature and in doing so wrest it from the concept of forgetting and the lack of commitment. I walked step-by-step, exploring loneliness and all the while, time expanded and I experienced how it melts and runs away and how the awareness of finiteness suddenly appears in all things.
The texts are based on recollections of these days. They reflect the activity of walking, monotony and the thoughts that suddenly occur in this emptiness, making their presence felt and interlinking with fragments of words and sentences previously heard or read.
The pictures do not tell a tale of walking in the rain or looking for accommodation at the end of a day's walking, or the damp, cold, nights in lonely hotels or even the few occasions that I met people and the scant discussions I had with them. The pictures are characterised by a longing for beauty and grandeur. They depict the changeability and colourfulness of the landscape. They depict the land and the water and how the light paints and draws the landscapes and leaves their impressions on the body. These pictures have nothing to do with the experience. They are references, a brief nod to the future.

Cécile Wick