2024

“Language is not a tool it is something we swim in.” - Donnel Stern

Shaped accordion cover with three pamphlet stitched inserts of Rives BFK paper with watercolor, gouache, graphite, pastel, acetone transfers, cliché verre and inkjet printing. My three poems, printed in Palatino, chronicle experiences with language about color as part of a multi-racial family. The book unfolds in a visual score structure with typographic fragment interludes and patterns stenciled from vintage player piano rolls.

Edition of 5

h 12 3/4" closed w 7 3/8" open 40 1/2" 

The text in Geography of Lost is a poem inspired by an article on Lost Person Behavior, the science of knowing where to search for someone based on which of 41 profiles applies. Implicit in my poem are hard things, feeling forlorn when contemplating a family history of depression, substance abuse, dementia, suicide and other mostly unseen manifestations of hopelessness. There are so many ways to be lost - the thesaurus entry lists over 60 words including disoriented and vanished. Pulling apart and fracturing my poem's lines set them adrift amid images of my aerial snow-covered landscapes photographed on a winter flight and overlaid with askew grids.

Unryu white paper and Strathmore tracing paper pages with Haijiro cover paper. Digital images & letterpress text on two overlapping pamphlet stitched signatures in a trifold cover inside a Khadi paper phase box enclosure

Edition of 18

Peony (Paeonia) bushes can live for a century. Mine was transplanted from my husband’s grandmother’s garden after her death. Grandma Bertha Hammonds was a so-called colored cleaning woman her entire life in our small town where Marian Anderson performed in 1930. So too were Ethel Reynolds, Gertrude Jones, Viola Booker, Mable Mayle, Anna Sites and Midge McGee. Miss Anderson’s mother in Philadelphia also scrubbed floors to support her young daughters. This artist’s book is inspired by these women and their drive to bring beauty into their communities in the face of exclusion and racial prejudice.

My thanks to Ric Sheffield and to Nancy Zafris for their research and writing about the colored women’s clubs and Marian Anderson. Studio support for this project was provided by the Morgan Art of Papermaking Conservatory and Educational Foundation Artist Residency Pro-gram during which I printed the text in letter-press from polymer plates and wood type.

The book includes inkjet prints and letterpress on Rives paper with handmade Morgan cotton abaca paper on the covers and a musical score in Miss Anderson’s handwriting printed on bookcloth.

Images are courtesy of the Shared Shelf Commons of Penn Library’s Rare Book & Manuscript Library Image Collection Marian Anderson Archives and the Knox County Black History Archive. Additional images include my photos of Mount Vernon, Ohio’s historic Woodward Opera House’s vintage wallpaper and Grandma Hammond’s still blooming peonies. The Ages of Peonies is my found poem constructed from newspaper accounts, historical research. Additional text include the lyrics to the spiritual song Sometimes I Feel Like a Motherless Child.

9” h x 6 3/8” w x 5/8” d 24 pages - drum leaf binding Edition of 16

In May 2019 I took a workshop at Mi Lab, Kawaguchiko, Japan where I made these small Mokuhanga prints. Japan was a dreamy and transformative journey.

Back home in Ohio the next fall I wrote the poem (with parenthetical references to John Cage’s musical compositions).

In spring 2022 in my new studio in California the poem, image and materials “found” each other and though apparently logical, it was a chance coalescence. Emerging from pandemic isolation’s ebb and into a newfound flow I’m piecing together fragments to create chronicles from my travels both real and imaginary.

The cover image is one of my Mt. Fuji photos digitally printed on a Japanese handmade paper postcard. The book is bound with long stitch binding using Rives BFK and imported papers. The poem is printed in Book Antiqua with masking tape transfers.

This is the second work produced in spring 2022 in my California studio chronicling my May 2019 Japan journey with a group from the Women’s Studio Workshop.

The Tokyo subway system, crucial to our cultural outings around the city, is an enormous complex labyrinth. We relied on our teachers to help us navigate it.

I wrote the poem back in Ohio that fall following the line structure of Bob Dylan’s Subterranean Homesick Blues purely for fun. I chose and altered my photographs to accompany the lines of text sometimes illustrating the line, other times simply enlarging patterns as background.

The book is Japanese stab bound with inkjet prints on Washi paper, text is hand-written.

Anne Carson’s poem Each Day Unexpected Salvation (John Cage) is written with tender specificity of shade’s cumulative varieties of grace. A typographic treatment of this poem is the text for this Japanese stab bound book on Masa paper. 43 pages, inkjet prints and transfers with indigo dyed paper covers by Japanese artist Naoaki Sakamoto. 14.25” h x 10” w x .25”d Edition of 3

Letterpress printed with wood type and wire on Zerkall paper, Anne Carson poem ink-jet printed in Avenir with Sumi ink wash overlay, drum leaf binding, sapphire blue hand-painted cover.

Unique book made as a 45th wedding anniversary gift for my husband & best friend Ricci.

Earth: The Book of Shale

One of three Elemental Errors altered book sculptures, poem by Andrew Grace, altered books, Sumi ink, digital print, crushed charcoal, acetate, glass

Water: Dive Bomb

One of three altered book sculptures in Elemental Errors Series, poem by Page Starzinger, water logged altered book, Sumi ink, acrylic paint, digital print on acetate, silicone sheet

Air: Personal Climate Change

One of three altered book sculptures in Elemental Error series, poem by Phillip Metres, altered book, Sumi ink, digital print, dust mask

5.5"w x 6"h x .25"d (closed)

25"w x 6"h x 3.5"d (open) 

Fishbone folded Shiramine Japanese paper, with gouache, graphite & steel punches, inspired by Mei Han & Randy Raine-Reusch’s Forest Rain, a composition for the Chinese zheng-an ancient 21-stringed instrument, Housed in a Japanese folded envelope with hand marbled paper. Edition of 4

5"w x 9" h x 1 1/4"d

Six small books with selected essays from Lewis Hyde's forthcoming A Primer for Forgetting, described by Hyde as a collage of materials drawn from many sources exploring the question: What if we valued forgetfulness as much as we value memory?

Pages for Forgetting is inkjet printed with acetone transfers on Somerset Book. Marginalia images are from vintage dictionaries and collages of forgotten object are by the artist.

Chain stitch bindings with hand-dyed linen thread the six books are enclosed in a custom clamshell box. Edition of 4

4 1/2"w x 6 1/8" h x 1/2"d

Fanny Howe's book Selected Poems, University of California Press, includes a series of poems under the title Introduction to the World.  This artist's book uses text from one of those poems with an expansive view of death. Imported papers are chine colle printed over inkjet printing on Shiramine paper with drum leaf binding. Autopsy diagram of slain teenager Michael Brown on graphite transfer paper front cover.

Edition of 3

10"w x 9.5" h x 2" d (closed)

Five Odes on Absence includes a poem of that title by David Baker with additional text from Vowels by Arthur Rimbaud. Photographs are of Giorgio Morandi ‘s Via Fondazza painting studio reconstructed in The Morandi Museum, D’Accursio Palace, Bologna Italy. Letterpress & relief printing on Stonehedge paper, with acetone transfers, gouache & graphite on Masa Japanese paper. One-of-a-kind French door folded accordion.

David introduced me to the work of the prolific English Romantic poet, John Clare, who, while institutionalized as delusional for 20 years in the mid 1800's, developed his own shorthand "coded" language (which appears in David's poem and is enlarged on my book's pages).  This coded language fascinated me not only because it is very close to contemporary texting abbreviations but also because it is beautifully evocative of the pathos of John Clare's life.

9"w x 12"h x 1.5"d (closed)

Inspired by a live performance of John Cage’s “Sonatas and Interludes for prepared piano”, my artist book, “Sixteen Songs from Marvellous Things” is a poetic and visual mash-up of Cage’s avant-garde musical composition and Gretchen E. Henderson’s innovative literary essay “On Marvellous Things Heard”, a 178 numbered section essay exploring a range of literary appropriations of music, in terms of translation and metamorphosis. 

The pages of “Sixteen Songs” contain my version of sixteen sonatas, haiku-like lines paralleling Cage’s rhythmic structure, composed by my cutting and combining four keywords - silence, ear, voice, and song, from Henderson’s essay.  Viewer interaction is required to open the envelopes on the interlude pages – hidden inside are small notes that unfold to reveal excerpts from Henderson’s essay.  

The accordion page size is proportioned to approximate sheet music, while various transfer techniques, digital printing and graphite stenciling represent audio waves, heart beats, and note patterns on player piano rolls, all with the intention of giving a visual/physical presence to the essence of Cage’s music and of Henderson’s essay.  On Rives BFK paper, with Masa paper & red book cloth, in an edition of three.