and another interpretation of the beet…

from above.

This book is sewn with a dos-si-dos style binding where two textblocks are sewn into one extended cover, making two books that share one cover.  The text which is interspersed, woven, shredded, or glued in place is excepts from my poem Beet Love and from a short story I wrote last year.  Both the poem and the story deal with how people relate to landscape and in turn, this book explores how text relates to book form.

The text and images were transferred with wintergreen oil, giving it a watery, dreamy quality.  modified long stitch.  Winter 2009.  Photo credit Teresa Silva (http://unwornworld.blogspot.com/)

inside page

inside page

front and back covers of one side of the book; text block of the other.

other cover, beet love poem in reverse

text sewn to page, inside cover

binding. Linked modified long stitich binding

buffalo books

Last year, while snowed in near Salt Lake City, my friends and I went down to the local library and I ran across a newsletter from an activist organization called the Buffalo Field Campaign.  They camp out near Yellowstone National Park and spend their days tracking and protecting the wild buffalo that migrate through there and into Montana.  The buffalo are rounded up and killed by state officials to prevent competition with private cattle ranchers grazing on public land.  I was struck by this project, and by the injustice of continuing the slaughter of buffalo for private use of public land.  And I fell in love with their icon of a buffalo with the text, I’m a buffalo, I do what I want.

And so, in response, my buffalo books, on an on-going project.  I’m a buffalo, I do what I want.

I'm a buffalo, I do what I want. The text inside this book tells the story of finding the BFC newsletter. Belgian secret binding, winter 2008.

I'm a buffalo, I do what I want. Inside pages.

Buffalo 2009 calendar. Fall 2008.

Earth tones sky tones. strap binding, winter 2008.

Earth tones sky tones, inside page.

check out the BFC: http://www.buffalofieldcampaign.org/

Brushing her Hair

This book, made in the later 2007-2008 winter,  is named for the title of a story I was working on while making it.  The pages are full of simple embroidery and text from the story as I was working out certain sections.

The story is about a pair of girls in high school trying to make sense of who they are and where they fit into their small rural town.  A lot of the story focuses on the tension between the two girls and one character’s need to leave the small town matched against the other’s desire to stay.  On the cover of this book you see Rissa looking at herself in the mirror, as she tries to figure out how she can be herself in the stiflingly small town.

Modified longstitch binding.