Missing
It is estimated that at least 8 million children worldwide go missing each year, including 800,000 in the U.S.; 230,000 in the U.K.; 100,000 in Germany; 50,000 in Canada; 45,000 in Mexico; 40,000 in Brazil and 39,000 in France. In most of the developing world, including Africa, Asia, and Latin America, there is no count for missing children. A multilingual database that features photographs and information about missing children from around the world was established in 1998 by the International Centre for Missing and Exploited Children (ICMEC). Twenty two countries participate in this Global Missing Children’s Network (GMCN). Eighteen countries have child abduction alerts: Australia, Belgium, Canada, Czech Republic, France, Greece, Guatemala, Italy, Mexico, the Netherlands, Malaysia, Poland, Portugal, Romania, South Korea, Switzerland, the U.K. and the US. All 50 of the United States have AMBER (America’s Missing: Broadcast Emergency Response) Alert plans in place and across Europe a single missing child telephone number, 116 000, is being implemented. In most African, Asian and Latin American countries, there are no specific laws regarding missing children, no established protocol for reporting, and no central missing child registries. In the US, half of the missing children cases reported each year are runaways. One quarter of missing children cases are abductions committed by family members, often as a result of custody disputes. Of children abducted by parents, 53% of the time fathers are responsible while 25% of the time mothers are responsible. The remainder of these children are abducted by grandparents, aunts, uncles, and other family members. Approximately 46% are returned within a week and 21% within a month. In the US only one-hundredth of 1% of all missing children, or approximately 100, are kidnappings by strangers and 90% of the kidnappers are men. In 80 percent of abductions by strangers, the first contact between the child and the abductor occurs within a quarter mile of the child’s home. Most potential abductors grab their victims on the street or try to lure them into their vehicles. Most of these 100 victims are between 12 and 17, 80% are white and 74% are girls. In more than half the cases the victims are sexually assaulted and 20% are not found alive. Acting quickly is critical. Seventy-four percent of abducted children who are ultimately murdered are dead within three hours of the abduction. The National Center for Missing & Exploited Children (NCMEC) serves as the US clearinghouse and resource center for information about missing and exploited children. Contact them at MissingKids.org. This book has 14 pages, 8.75” x 9.5” x 1.25”, each with a 1.75” etched copper square image of a child. The post bound cover of moss green silk has a collaged image within a lead wrapped wood frame.
Ladies of the Night
Ladies of the Night was designed to fit into a 10” x 12” x ½” aluminum box. It was printed at Roland DGA, the pages on their VersaUV LEC-330 and the aluminum box on their LEF-300, a flatbed printer with white and gloss inks. Printed 57” long it folded as an accordion with six 9 ½” x 11 ½” pages inside and 6 pages outside. Ladies of the Night used photographs of twin performance artists, Abigail and Emily Taylor. The text on the back of Ladies reads: Prostitution is the practice or occupation of engaging in sexual activity for payment. As with other countries, prostitution in the US can be divided into three broad categories: street prostitution, brothel prostitution, and escort prostitution. There are an estimated 1 million prostitutes in the US. Most have a high school diploma and many have attended college. Many enter the sex industry to provide for their families when they have exhausted all other options. Nevada is the only state in the U.S. to allow legal prostitution – in the form of regulated brothels, although it exists in most parts of the country. Street prostitutes are attacked physically on average of once per month — 68% reported having been raped and 82% reported having been physically assaulted. Their death rate is 6 times that of the general population and more than double that of fishing workers, the highest fatality profession. Between 70,000 and 80,000 people are arrested each year for prostitution costing taxpayers approximately $200 million. Of arrests related to prostitution 10% are the customers, 20% are pimps or male prostitutes and 70% are female prostitutes. Prostitution in the US is estimated to generate $14 billion a year, more than drugs and guns combined. Approximately 10% of customers pay with credit cards. Craigslist no longer lists “adult services” however Backpage.com makes an average of $22 million a year from adult classifieds.
War Zone
“WarZone: a traveling board game with no winner” is designed to be played anywhere other than in your own country. Instructions, game board, spinner board and game pieces are housed in a clear plastic suitcase. In the top of the suitcase, an image of the first atomic bomb blast is overlaid with a definition of war as “armed conflict, prosecuted with military forces aiming to enforce the political will of the victor upon the defeated”. It also contains information about human aggression from prehistory to the present and questions whether war is noble or morally problematic and destructive of lives and property. The Spinner Board, printed onto stiff board and contour cut to fit into in the bottom of the suitcase, allows you to choose the country in which to play and gives information on ongoing conflicts around the world. The countries shown on the map in black and around the outer edge of the circle have ongoing military conflicts that result in more than 1,000 violent deaths per year, including both military and civilians. Other conflicts are shown in red on the map. You can turn the spinner to select a country in which to participate or choose from the list of additional war zones. The Rules of Engagement state that you can place your soldier on any square of the game board and move randomly any number of spaces in any direction. You need not take turns and can remove the soldiers of any other player at will, unless you are removed first. If you are on a square with information and instructions, do as you are told. The Game Board resembles a checkerboard with squares which give instructions such as “no weapons found: look again”, “tour of duty extended: start over” and “peace negotiations begun: pray for success”. The red and black checker-like pieces are “us” and “them”. The game never ends, but may move to a different place of engagement. There are no winners, only losers. The WarZone game boards and suitcase were printed at Roland DGA on the LEF-300. a flatbed printer with white and gloss inks. It is an edition of ten in a suitcase 10 3/8” x 12 7/8” x 1 ½”.
Mending
“Mending” is a 6″ x 6″ woven album structure with 62 mixed media/ collaged pages. The cover is paper over board. Text, interspersed throughout the book, reads: a person a relationship in need of repair a rift a break a tear damaged goods how to put it right mend one’s ways to make amends sort it out patch it up stitch it together fix it working back and forth across the rift darning with resolve mending
Cape Cod
Cape Cod used paper stained with rust and indigo dye for the pages and cover. Rust colored spacers allowed for incorporating found treasures. Each double page spread, with its spacer, was sewn to the spine with a modified longstitch. An enamel pin, with a map of the area, was affixed to the cover. A horizontal dye line, across the middle of each page, suggested landscapes and seascapes for the collaged images of boats, houses and lighthouses. The journal is 6″ x 5″ x .75″ with 28 pages.
Afloat
This travel journal, completed in the Alban Hills, south of Rome, uses costume plates and a fragile map from “Caesar’s Commentaries on the Gallic War” published in 1888. The plates were collaged over mono prints which I textured to resemble the stones of Roman construction. The 22 pages, 7.75” x 5.75” x .75”, have a drum leaf binding with a replica Roman coin on the cover. The handwritten text, a quote from Shakespear’s play “Julius Caesar”, seemed appropriate since in many ways we now seem to be “afloat” — the title of the book. There is a tide in the affairs of men, which taken at the flood, leads on to fortune. Omitted, all the voyage of their life is bound in shallows and in miseries. On such a full sea are we now afloat. William Shakespeare “Julius Caesar” Act IV, Scene III
Concordat
A Concordat is an agreement or treaty, especially one between the Vatican and a secular government relating to matters of mutual interest. The Reichskonkordat was a controversial treaty negotiated between the Vatican and the newly formed Nazi government. It was signed on July 20, 1933 by Cardinal Eugenio Pacelli, the Vatican Secretary of State, who later became Pope Pius XII. The Concordat effectively removed the German Catholic Church from any opposition to Hitler and gave moral legitimacy to the Nazi regime. By offering recognition from a foreign state it enabled Hitler to come to power. For the Church, it seemed to promise that it could carry out its spiritual mission, however violations of the treaty by the Nazi regime began almost immediately. Some have viewed the Concordat as a manifestation of the Pope’s preference for dictatorships over democracies and disregard for German Jews. The Vatican insisted, however, that they approved the agreement simply to protect the church. The concordat remains in effect to this day. ______________________________ Concordat, 5.5” x 3.75” x .75”, 26 painted, mono printed and collaged pages with mica overlays. Drum leaf binding with leather cover (cut from vintage jacket). Images of wood and stone by 16th century Würzburg sculptor Tilman Riemenschneider are contrasted with photographs from the exhibition, “Fascination and Terror” at the Nuremberg Documentation Center. The title uses the Gothic font Maximilian Zierbuchstaben by Dieter Steffmann. For additional documentation gathered from the Vatican archives see: Cornwell, John. “Hitler’s Pope: The Secret History of Pius XII”, Viking Press, NYC, 1999
Sisi: Empress of Austria
Sisi was born in Munich in 1837. At the age of 15 was married to her cousin the Hapsburg Emperor Franz Joseph. Although the Emperor was very much in love with Sisi, she was stifled by the protocol of the court and wrote in her diary, “I have awakened in a dungeon, with chains on my hands.” Later in life she added, “Marriage is an absurd arrangement. One is sold as a fifteen-year-old child and makes a vow one does not understand and then regrets for thirty years or more, and which one can never undo again.” Sisi was an especially beautiful woman, but had health issues that were attributed to tuberculosis but may have been caused by syphilis, presumably contracted from her husband. She was obsessed with her image and exercise routine. At 5’ 8”, she fasted to maintain her 110 lbs and 16” waist, had a gym installed in the palace and was extreme with her beauty products and routines. Her hair cascaded to the floor and required several hours a day to style. Sisi had four children, the first three raised by her dictatorial mother in law. The fourth, Marie Valerie, she retained in her control. She said, “My other children were taken away from me at once. I was permitted to see the children only when Archduchess Sophie gave permission. She was always present when I visited the children. Finally I gave up the struggle and went upstairs only rarely.” Fluent in Hungarian, Greek, English and French, Sisi was an unhappy woman and a restless, obsessive traveler, visiting Madeira, Morocco, Algeria, Malta, Egypt and Turkey and establishing homes in Corfu, Madeira and Venice. In a poem she wrote: “I wander lonely in this world, Delight and life long time averted, No confidant to share my inner self, A matching soul never revealed.” As she aged she said, “Ah, the horror of growing old, to feel the hand of Time laid upon one’s body, to watch the skin wrinkling, to awake and fear the morning light, and to know that one is no longer desirable! Life without beauty would be worthless to me.” She carried a hypodermic for cocaine in her travel medicine case. During one of Sisi’s illnesses, her daughter, Valerie said, “Much worse than the ailment is Mama’s indescribable despair and hopelessness. She says that it is a torment to be alive, and she indicates that she wants to kill herself.” In 1989, her son and heir to the throne, Rudolf shot his young mistress then several hours later put a bullet through his own brain at the family hunting lodge, Mayerling. After the suicide, Sisi only wore black and her spa-to-spa drifting intensified, as everyone around her fretted about her dark depressive spells. At age 61, on a street in Geneva, Sisi was stabbed by an anarchist. No one realized the extent of the injury and she subsequently died. Hearing the news of her death, her husband whispered, “No one knows how much we are loved” and adds, “Nothing will be spared me on this earth” Sisi, 7.25” x 5.25” x .25”, 10 pages, drum leaf binding with watered silk over board cover. Edition of 4
Apache
Begun on a trip to Arizona, this small book explores our appalling treatment of Native Americans. Vintage photos of Apache Indians are collaged onto small eco printed tags which are placed into a pocket accordion, designed to fit into a well-worn leather pouch. The colophon describes the subjugation of the Apache tribes as they fought to defend their homelands in the Southwest. Prospectors and settlers, supported by the might of the United States government have gained their land, natural resources and wealth while the Apaches have lost their lifestyle and their culture, religion and ceremonies have fallen into decline. 5.5″ x 3.75″ x 1.75″ closed and 5.5″ x 28″ open with 10 inserts printed back and front.
Family Portraits
“Family Portraits”, made from the cover of a vintage leather bible, is designed to be viewed standing. It is 12.5″ x 9.5″ x 3.75″ with a spine the width of the metal closures. Since the pages were designed to hold “Family Portraits”, I chose engravings picturing women of the bible by Gustave Dore. The text accompanying the images reads: Eve and Adam “Adam named his wife Eve, because she would become the mother of all the living.” Genesis 3:20 Delilah and Sampson “If my head were shaved, my strength would leave me, and I would become as weak as any other man.” Judges 16:17 Judith “This is the head of Holofernes … The Lord has struck him down by the hand of a woman!” Judith 13:15 Mary Magdalene “Her sins, which are many, are forgiven; for she loved much.” Luke 7:47 The Virgins of Jabesh-Gilead The Benjamites found “four hundred young women who had never slept with a man, and they took them.” Judges 21:12 A vintage wood and metal box holds the book in a velvet cradle.