After a Place in Kansas

hand bound journal, embroidered with a William  Morris style sugar skull. 

Merriam stops by, looking for cash, maybe once a month around four. She brings her nicest things. The first time I meet her, the words stretch and hang from the scab at the corner of her mouth.
She has really nice things. They're worth more than I can give, but she is in a hurry. Merriam doesn't have the time that I have. She's on her way to mass. 

she smelled like a Four Roses factory

This a cursory example of a coptic bound, pretty raw book. I made two for friends who tend bar, and needed a place to keep their recipes. The cover is a repurposed book, and the insides are graph paper, lined on back. They each have a moniker placard, some tabbed cards to use at will, and elastic to close, with an envelope for recipes written, on the fly. 

an excerpt from Music for Chameleons by: Truman Capote

The Analog Nature of Planes

A repurposed book, originally from 1929,  I gutted this copy of Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo. Using leather from an old purse I connect the covers by using a Japanese Stab Binding design and waxed thread. The inside pages are blank and are made from old white paper bags, cut to make pages, while maintaining their creases. There are no end pages because the beauty of the original book deserves display, and the Japanese Stab binding is exposed with the wear of the purse leather.  

You look so strange as a continuous wave
Reaching and sweeping
The valleys were our all night diner and you were always up in the air
Have you heard of wait and see? These things take time
and all the other cliches
I was going to show you life as a full object, not the dispensation of memory
I wanted the momentary beauties to approach infinity
Don't medicate me; it can't be that bad
and all the other cliches
Let me be specific
I am in literal hell while you run a marathon through the pathos of your past
I spoke with the devil, (his proximity not at all coincidence), and he let me in on it
Regret is his irony, and distraction his imitation of beauty. 

The Dress Maker's Book

   the dress and the form

              the form lends itself

              inanimate in desire

                allows the other

getting acquainted with living things

These books are abandoned homes, once inhabited by memories. They are layered with mirages, text taken away from the original page, menageries left to howl at each other when the covers meet to close. 


Adaptation is a negotiation between two options; a binary decision of nature, leaving us with very little say in the matter.  Herbert Spencer called Charles Darwin's natural selection, survival of the fittest, perhaps prescribes too much meaning to a thing that has only recently acquired the ability to decide. Many people survive, without so desiring. We are struggling... between our realizations of the decisions we arbitrarily make, and being propelled forth by the ones we don't.
Getting Acquainted With Living Things is a system of order for my experience in these matters. The narrative is a tree, and any given interpretation is a branch.
In the book, each chapter starts with a stark page. The transitions may be neither mild, nor clear. For me, distinction is fading. And while we are more valuable through experience, we are no longer young, nor have as much time to experience.  Youth is wasted on the young?  It's not even trite. It's a semblance of a kind of local familiarity repeated over and over again, a little aligned, a little unspecific.
Order is human attribute to what's happening. And narrative and storytelling, which has always been mine, is slipping away.

Chandrasekhar's Addendum

A book I made for a craft fair, and forgot to mention.

Hand screen printed cloth cover. Artichoke Flower print, buttonhole bound, An assortment of papers, including vintage music sheets, and pockets for treasures. Cloth, hand screen printed end pages.

An Essay to Disguise Giving Up

There are the mistakes we make after trying very hard without success, and the ones we make and attribute to divine intervention, for their favorable outcome. But I am interested in the tangibility of intention- the end we can attribute to ourselves, our perception, our experience, or our next step.

I feel temporary, the impulse of time's momentum relative to my actions, like I'm sifting through peanut butter, my thoughts fall like concrete from my ear to break my foot, the opposite of amnesia.

I recognize myself as an animal, most, in my impulses. And I think trying things over and over to eliminate mistakes is an evolution we can benefit from in our lifetime. So I am in love with momentum, and feel like a caged animal when I come to an unfamiliar point and don't know which way to go. I am learning the graceful way of going back the way I came, or leaving the path altogether. Some may call it quitting. But we are too temporary to attribute meaning to all of our mistakes. Sometimes patience prevails. Sometimes things are plain wrong. I am learning when to stop, abandon ship, give up, or quit in whatever connotation the situation requires. The truth is, leaving is movement.

Here is one thing I decided just won't work, for now.:

It was going to be a comprehensive catalogue of all the techniques I learned in my undergrad.

I was pretty far along in documenting the process, and close to finishing this task.

It's made from an old music techniques book, some of the record books that have pockets in which to hold the records, davey board, and fabric. I planned on finishing the

cover with an image transfer of the altered cover with my name, new title and content in place of the old technique book's title, and content.

I will return to this project, with a strong foundation for format, and a better understanding of durability in construction. I am really interested in categorizing information in the most efficient, usable form. For now, though, I am in Australia, working on a smaller scale, with ideas I can hold in my hands, while my mind takes in everything else.

Owl Mother, Daughter

To: Ellis Anders

This treasure is a song book I found in Arles, France.

And has become a place for my new niece to keep her treasure.

Ghost Images: Making Plans and Impressions

Image Transfer and Planner Making

The things you'll need:
Gel Medium (gesso or mod podge also works; gloss or matte), a palette knife (spoon, stick, bone folder, letter opener, or paint brush); papers, envelopes, exacto knife, paper clips, labels (if you want your image transfer to be a planner); an image (xerox or photo copy); a place on which to transfer (fabric, wood, paper, etc.; this will be the planner covers); not pictured: bowl of water and brush (wide sponge brush works best)


The Steps to Take
1) Coat image with medium, using palette knife, turn over and place on transfer surface, brandish with palette knife handle (or bone folder eq.), and allow to dry thoroughly (overnight is safest, but hair dryers work, or heat)







2) Once the image is completely dry, wet with sponge brush and water, and carefully peel paper off. You can use the brush to remove most of the paper, and can roll the remaining debris with fingers.







3)Once the paper is mostly removed, coat with gel medium, and allow to dry



4)To begin making the planner, measure holes evenly along either the top or side edges of the front and back of the planner. Use an awl, or a nail, and smooth with sandpaper. Poke the holes from the face to the inside.
5) Cut planner papers, hole punch evenly with holes on the front and back covers. Use two pages as end pages, and with a thin paste, glue them to the inside covers.
6) In order to connect it all, use binder rings (found at any practical office supply store); size to needs.



The End

You can label tabs with a typewriter, to section off your parts.

Mourning the Loss of a Treasure: Cowboy Dances

When mourning the loss of a treasure, I highly recommend making a new one.


this is an old record book found at the bins. If you are familiar with the bins, then you are lucky. It became a cd book, as a birthday gift.







Because our sorrow is useful energy. And rarely do we let ourselves benefit from its power.



the cds in the book are mixes, inspired by titles of old contra dances.








You may decide to give this thing away; you may not be able to love it in your current state.


called such things as 'dive for the oyster', 'cheat and swing', 'don't you touch her', 'rattlesnake twist', etc.






But that's okay. Because surely, someone else can. In his or her current state.

meetings as memory and snow flakes

I played games as a child, where I was moving without touching the ground. We drove around in cars made from the tops of gift boxes, and we built bridges from books so that we could cross the hot lava without losing a limb. I don't know how we rationalized what 'counted' as safe ground, and what didn't. I just know that there was always a we, because these games were not fun without one, and you can't decide what really 'counts' without one. The rules seem permanent when there's a consensus.
I have just been thinking about staying in touch, and the impossibility of truly remaining there. People are splinters, aside from the words we use, and the sentimentality we prescribe to every person we make love to, or eat lunch with.
So here is to a good first impression, repeated like pi, or ground hog's day, to time spent reborn as memory, and to our mind's arbitrary reflexes:




"How many of these exquisitely constructed jewels do we heedlessly crush and shatter unconsciously during a brief walk in the snow and how crude and imperfect seem the productions of human minds and hands when compared to those formed by the blind forces of nature."
-Jean M. Thompson

The Compound Umbel Looks Like a Leaky Umbrella

When the stalks all arise at the same level, the inflorescence is an umbel. An umbel is compound when it is repeatedly branched.

This book is coptic bound, and approximately 4x5". It's a blank book, inside, and was altered from less than one cover of a reader's digest book, some packing materials for a multi-tool, tracing paper, plant diagrams, and stamped text. Happy Birthday to Melinda, a bit late.

Adaptations of Birds: On Winged Things and Others in the Sky

I am disappointed in the quality of these, the only photos I have, of this book. I was meeting a deadline of sorts, and sacrificed documentation for detail. Left is before, right is after. The inside pages are collages, paintings, and blank pages paying homage to the beautiful things in the sky. I'm happy that my work is taking direction again. I moved across the country, and for the time before, and a little after the move, I was all over the place. This book took shape in a way that I am familiar with, but found me desiring cohesion apart from the context of the owner. Most of my books are gifts, and some of them turn into a more personal documentation of my relationship with the owner.
The inside pages are mostly new to the book, coptic bound, and glued by end pages to the cover. The folios consist of pages from the original book, tracing paper, gouache paintings of walking patterns of birds, pictures from old books, and so on. The cover is altered by an octagonal recess, covered with green graph paper, with a layer of tracing paper on top. On the underside of the tracing paper are penciled diagrams of war planes, and on the upperside is the stamped text of the title.

"The mind is an open cavity in which the entire village dwells, and the jungle grows"

(from Bonfire of the Vanities, by Tom Wolfe) (A piece from an old laundry bag as the spine; an old book, coptic bound, again)
to: kimo based on the music stand of Evelyn Foust

"Each person is a transitory composite of materials borrowed from the environment." I hope that he will look at this book, and not be disappointed that I cut up some important relics, to create a new one.

We Are Not Leaving This Land and We Will Begin to Become Native to it When We Recognize This Fact

I wish for community through craft.


To you, I want to be what I create. Identity is so much more identifiable when there's a product to exhibit. My and your sole consistent characteristics could be what we do, and people would sleep easier knowing this about us. All the comfort in social situations comes from familiarity.

My onl y real plan for making that happen involves a vague concept for personal momentum.

Chase Several Hares and You Won't Catch One

Darren Ohl is moving to Eugene, Oregon. I am going to miss him. I hope he keeps being really funny, and a little bit twisted, and somewhat sentimental in a really even, and natural way. I hope he documents some of it in the book I made for him. To Eugene:

This is an old book I found in a vintage store in Orlando called DejaVu.It's a coptic bound book, bound inside out from the cover. The spine is cut as a buttonhole stitch, acting as a window, to a very limited amount of the book's secrets.
There's a ribbon to seal it closed, hopefully just masculine enough. The top of the saddle has leather above it, hopefully just western enough. I hope the composition is balanced. I hope the concept doesn't get stuck in the execution. I hope the execution doesn't end everything in a bloody mess, with too many onlookers. It wouldn't make sense. Not in this day and age.