Artist Books

I explore book forms as another way to present visual imagery and follow the meandering of thought. As in much of my work I try to challenge ways of seeing and invite new perspectives on the world.

Chiasma

These sculptural bookforms challenge perception, as well as ways of thinking and experiencing the world. As narrative structures they are flexible, bending back, reflecting and augmenting what has come before. Our everyday experience with the world—our bodily engagement with it—follows the twists and turns of the attention, reacting to stimuli, narratives arcing; moment by moment we breathe the world in and become new. These chiasmic books double back again and again, reflecting the position of the viewer in the world. The viewer moves intentionally through (along) the lines of the book, opening and closing pages and reordering the composition, neither progressing nor regressing, just being, experiencing, perceiving. The body absorbs and gives back. The books in this cyanotype chiasma series can be folded into more possible configurations than I can count. The book covers are made of cotton construction paper and pigmented kozo. They are sections of a large pour (8’ x 12’) handmade paper sheet made by my class in a workshop at Women’s Studio Workshop in 2019 led by Hong Hong. We divided the finished sheet among ourselves at the end of class.

Sine Out of Time (2021)

Chiasma/Reflecting (2021)

Migration (2022)

This dos-a-dos book presents landscapes drawn with walnut, gesso, pencil, and watercolor on the pages of a damaged book. The imagery in the six signatures meanders discontinuously yet coherently. They are meditations on migration and landscapes permanently changed by the crisis of climate change and class struggle. If I could I would draw a map to safety for all the millions on the march in the world, crossing borders, seas, looking for safety, for a chance to survive. The signatures are sewn to a folded eco-printed page.