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″
Lockdown
This book followed the progress of Covid-19 with collaged images and text from the news, historical comparisons, the president’s proclamations, my handwritten comments in graphite and details enhanced with colored pencil, oil pastel and acrylic. However, as states begin to reopen their economies without control of the virus, and it appeared that the pandemic might extend indefinitely, I decided that the book and the stay-at-home order would end together and Lockdown would be the title. A monthly summary tracked changes of substance through the end of the year. Closing out 2020, the final paragraph in Lockdown says: “While the pandemic has had wide-ranging impacts on nearly every aspect of development including access to health care and food insecurity, the weakest and most vulnerable portions of the population have been disproportionately affected. With a new administration, we need to rebuild trust in government, correct the moral injuries of the past four years and rebalance the economy to benefit the working class. We need to restore the soul of America.” Lockdown is 6”x 4.5” with 202 pages of black Strathmore Artagain. The simplified cover is black bookcloth over board.
Brain Fog
One of the long term side effects of Covid-19 is called “brain fog”. The title has been lightly engraved into the natural bookcloth cover using a font called Ambulance Shotgun. Related images have been transferred onto handmade lama li paper and handwritten text added. Brain Fog, 7.5” x 5”, 34 pages
Whitewash
Hash marks and fragments represent 545 children separated from their parents at the U.S.- Mexican border to deter immigration. In their efforts to reunite families, the current administration has been hampered by incomplete or non-existent records. The effort toward a rational immigration policy is ongoing. Sixteen collaged canvas panels 10″ x 10″, can be displayed as 10″ x 20″ double-page spreads or in a 40″ x 40″ grid.
Insurrection
On January 6, 2021, an insurrection attempted to disrupt the certification of the President of the United States. Images taken from the FBI website, which is seeking the public’s assistance in identifying individuals who made unlawful entry into the U.S. Capitol building, were collaged onto paintings produced in response to the devastation. Arrests are being made for criminal violations, such as destruction of property, assaulting law enforcement personnel, targeting members of the media for assault, and other unlawful conduct. https://www.fbi.gov/wanted/capitol-violence Insurrection, 5 ¾” x 7.5”, 28 pages, drum-leaf binding with paintings and collage