Glaciers Melt
I took to Alaska a small journal, 5” x 4” with 24 pages. The cover was made from eco printed leather over stiff paper. The top and bottom of the wrinkled pages had been dipped in either indigo or rust, creating an irregular horizon line. During the trip I drew and painted the mountains with graphite, water color, white gouache and chalk. The text throughout the book reads: Glaciers Melt Glaciers are giant rivers of ice formed over centuries as fallen snow is compressed into layers of ice. They flow out to sea as ice shelves where pieces break off, or calve, to form icebergs. Today, about 10% of land area on Earth is covered with glacial ice. 90% is in Antarctica and 10% is in the Greenland ice cap. Glaciers now lose up to 390 billion tons of ice and snow per year. The largest regional losses are in Alaska, followed by the Southern Andes and the Arctic. Seventy five billion tons of ice from Alaskan glaciers are being lost each year and 95% of the oldest and thickest ice in the Arctic is already gone. If emissions continue to rise unchecked, the Arctic could be ice free in the summer by 2040 and melting on Greenland would double by the end of the century. By that time, ICCP projects that sea level will rise between 4 and 35”. At the high end, it would be an unmitigated disaster. As glaciers melt and oceans warm, ocean currents will continue to disrupt weather patterns. Where and when fish spawn will continue to change and some fishing industries will fail. Wildlife, especially those living on ice, like walrus and polar bears, are also impacted as they lose their land. As storms become more intense, coastal flooding will become more frequent and communities will continue to be displaced and face billion-dollar disaster recovery bills. Addressing the causes of warming ocean and air temperatures are our only hope for slowing or reversing the glacial melt. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Dorothy Simpson Krause, 2019
Alaska
In Ketchikan, Alaska I made a miniature book using a metal box for mints and totem images from the Totem Heritage Center. It’s 1.5″ x 2.75” with six pages affixed inside the metal box with sliding top
Anne with an “e”
“Anne with an e”, a retelling of L. M. Montgomery’s “Anne of Green Gables”, was begun in Charlottetown, PEI, home of the fictional Anne. To make the journal as I travel, I bought a used copy of the 2018 100th anniversary edition and removed the covers, spine and the eight illustrations. I tore some eco printed papers to size and added a strip of ochre leather that became the spine. Along the way I cut out the black and white illustrations, painted them with watercolor and placed them on the eco printed pages. I added artifacts that I found at Green Gables, , and bound the pages into the spine and covers. When I returned to the studio I used the original spine on a slipcase I made from backboard and a piece of rust colored bookcloth. The book has twenty 5″ x 8″ eco-printed pages with transferred text reading: Anne, an orphan, comes to Green Gables to help siblings Matthew and Marilla. All is not idyllic for the quick-tempered red headed Anne. She hits classmate, Gilbert, with a slate for calling her “Carrots”. Among her many misadventures, Anne takes a dare and falls off a roof. And, trying to dye her hated red hair black, Anne accidentally dyes it green. When Matthew dies, Anne gives up her college scholarship to help Marilla. Gilbert and Anne become more than friends and eventually live happily ever after.
Akrotiri
Reproductions of wall paintings from the Akrotiri archeological site on the Greek island of Santorini were used in the interior of this two paged 7.5″ x 5″ book. The cover has slabs of marble-like polymer clay interwoven with cords and thread over natural linen.
Morocco
A travel journal begun in Morocco uses textural rubbings, patterning and collage, enhanced with oil pastels, paint and marker. A metal mirror, found in Morocco is on the cover with the title added with press-on letters. It’s 6″ x 4″ with 32 pages.
Slumber On
Slumber On is a miniature book, 1.25” x 1”, with 40 eco printed pages and transferred text, coptic bound. The cover is solder over brass with an inlaid image. The text from Victor Herbert and Henry B. Smith’s 1898 Broadway musical, “The Fortune Teller”, reads: Slumber on, my little gypsy sweetheart, dream of the field and the grove. Can you hear me, hear me in that dream land where your fancies rove. Slumber on my little gypsy sweetheart, wild little woodland dove. Can you hear the song that tells you all my heart’s true love.
Civil Wars
Although civil wars are defined as wars between organized groups within the same state or republic, or between two countries created from a formerly united state, the term also seems appropriately applied to individuals whose behavior becomes uncivil during conflict. Based on a Jacob’s ladder structure designed by Susan Joy Share, this variation is a unique interactive box, 9.25” x 6.5” x 2“, with thirty-six 3” x 3” boxes or panels. The panels are collaged with vintage receipts, letters, photographs and fabric, including fragments of a Confederate flag. The boxes contain game pieces, blocks and a lock and key. Various surfaces are exposed as the box is opened from different directions. The enclosure is a clamshell box, 10.5“ x 7.5“ x 3.5“ covered in black and red book cloth. It was completed at the Jaffe Center for Book Arts, Florida Atlantic University, Boca Raton, Florida.
Quebec
Sing vintage photographs collaged against gold and black patterned paper, “Quebec” is a four page concertina of Arches Cover Black. The front and back covers are board wrapped in polymer clay, painted black, burnished with gold pigment and embedded with found ephemera. “Quebec” is 7″ x 4″ closed, 7″ x 16″ open. It was made in Quebec City, Canada.
Channeling Athena
In 2019, when I was in Athens, I began a book with watercolors of the landscape and collaged images of Athena. When I returned home, I decided to explore my relation to the archetype and wrote a narrative, contrasting my comments with excerpts from Jean Shinoda Bolen’s Goddesses in Everywoman. Because it seemed presumptuous to compare myself to Athena, I printed the narrative on 4 vellum sheets and “hid” them between the drum-leaf pages. Channeling Athena is 7.5″ x 6″ with 10 watercolor and collaged pages and 4 vellum inserts. It has a drum-leaf binding with the cover of vintage white leather over board.
Eucalyptus
Eucalyptus forests are some of the most flammable in the world because of the volatile oils produced by the leaves, which combine with leaf litter and peeling bark to accumulate as large amounts of dry, combustible fuel. A small ground fire, drawn by the peeling bark up into the leaves, can turn into a terrifying, explosive firestorm in a matter of minutes as the flames spread through the oil-rich air of the tree crowns with catastrophic results. Adapted to survive, burning releases seeds which thrive in freshly burned, ash-rich soils and rapidly regrow into a forest both beautiful and deadly. Six botanical prints with transferred text in handmade printed/ embossed leather portfolio. 6″ x 9″