With Nothing Left to do....

     The Little Skeleton began as an homage to Frida Kahlo, and Dia de Los Muertos. As a woman familiar with, and brilliant at expressing loneliness and pain,  Kahlo's life and work opened my eyes to an aspect of our culture that is hugely amiss. We are uncomfortable people who don't want to talk about bad things. I envy older cultures, more mature and brave in tradition.
     I created the Little Skeleton's image and a one line explanation, hoping to evoke discomfort, but also a fondness for the character that would conquer the discomfort.
     People began to inquire about him, and that encouraged me to tell his story...
     The Little Skeleton is abandoned by life, too quickly, and left in the wrong season at a theme park. Going through the motions, without an animate friend or guardian, he is not so much trumped by rides and games without operators, as forlornly playing until he just moves on. He plays every game and rides every ride, but it's not what it's supposed to be. Then he departs.  It's not meant to depict suicide, as the little skeleton is already dead, but I guess the imagery is a bit macabre. It seems to me he was just born that way, more a sad symbol of the loneliest thing: being a child with no play mates, in a space that's usually filled with color sound and company; everything with him is just a bit off.

      The story book is hand dyed, embellished, and screen printed with my original drawings. I made eight copies and have two left, available at   The Little Skeleton

Encyclopediae

"we live in an era of terrible preoccupation with presentation and interpretation. Sometimes people strive to abide by the strictest etiquette, but in the process behave inappropriately." -a dictionary of modern American usage


I made a couple reference books from altered books.
Both bindings are similar, coptic, with the biggest paper and
folders I already had for the book block.

About Animals has my collection of animals from land sea

and air. They're arranged not exactly according to the Carl

Linnaeus' binomial nomenclature. Mine is a little more esthetic. 

Dried Plant Material and Other Lifeless Forms contains

plants, rocks, and flower arrangements. Both books are meant

to be references for my bouquets, and stitchings. 

Grandma Party: Orlando FL

This year, using cut paper and stitches, I created the poster for the annual event called Grandma Party. It's held in Orlando FL at Stardust Video and Coffee (1842 Winter Park Rd.), and many craft makers, artists, and artisans have booths and sell wares. (Generally December, the week before Christmas, each year).

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

Dear, please deal with the negative space I left

     It started with a ledger I found,

preserved in its original plastic, to

make a home planner/vision for a 

friend.  

     Using text books and other cut-outs, 

I provided things native to his land, 

leaving space for adding and subtracting. 

     The subtracting part is important,

so rather than glue, I sliced the pages

with a utility knife (trying not to cut 

the next page), and placed the cutouts' 

corners in the slots (remove at will).

     My favorite feature uses three 

similar layouts to the house, implying 

a garden using velcro on certain 

spaces on the plots, and providing a 

library of plants of varying sizes and 

colors, with velcro on their backs, in 

the envelope. 

Practice Makes Perpetual Motion

      

     I made this journal for one of a very few people I know who keep track. Memory is difficult... 
    I began keeping a daily log of one liners, but it's only a slight hint.
    Anyway, this is a repurposed elementary school "practice book". The book block (above) is coptic bound, and glued to the covers by the end pages at the beginning and end of the block. The covers are joined by more of the repurposed purse leather. The leather is concealed between the back of the front cover and first end page, and comes around the back cover. The spine has a spot to index the book. 

"The instant of petrified violence that sometimes foreruns a summer storm saturated the hushed yard." -T. Capote

for a friend who understands the petrified violences in the yard before the storm, and the other kinds.

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 Hard Part is Over

To know you and not believe in you is a peaceful acquiescence to heritage, while wanting more from now on.

Deconstructing Truths

I'm trying to stay current, and it isn't easy.

The era of the love letter gave way to this: a tip not a throw...back
Anticipate the absence of show; a hidden timing that is not private
Turpid and Teflon, the language of intimacy is also a crime without reprehension.

Field Guides to Acquainting with Living Things

     much like the source for their origin, these field guides have room to go in 

their arching concept of what is perception and sequentiality. mostly blank, 

the person who inherits them will have space for personal documentation with 

slight interruption of imagery; return to the scene of the crime of the things I 

left behind, and give them the purpose I didn't have the heart to. 

          

           

in the library of human dynamics

these books house my artist statements for my library of human dynamics, immutable show

If each of us is a book, our pages are perforated and magnetic and could be blank for all their ephemeral accuracy. Though we are sequential beings, our narratives are not linear. Memory is written on holographic stationary, recounting an ambience of history, physics, and expectation. We agree to coalesce by using every day and ordinary expressions, identifying patterns, telling time, and working around the weather. But the blindingly beautiful weight of our potential is hidden in the archives of our library of human dynamics. The truth is immutably infinite, and we function as reflective tricks of this light. I expect to spend my entire life growing acquainted to living things.

in the library of human dynamics

Blank and Beautiful: A Library of Human Dynamics, Immutable

   

        If each of us is a book, our pages are perforated and magnetic and could be blank for all their ephemeral accuracy. Though we are sequential beings, our narratives are not linear. Memory is written on holographic stationary, recounting an ambience of history, physics, and expectation. We agree to coalesce by using every day and ordinary expressions, identifying patterns, telling time, and working around the weather. But the blindingly beautiful weight of our potential is hidden in the archives of our library of human dynamics. The truth is immutably infinite, and we function as reflective tricks of this light. I expect to spend my entire life growing acquainted to living things.

                        

                       

http://orlandoweekly.com/arts/local-book-artists-embrace-the-union-of-wood-pulp-and-word-1.1598401

holy spicoli

                             

Safe Travels: A Ritual for Those Who Love

To Abby and Mark: A ritual celebrating the journey of love bonded in the ceremony of marriage.

Here is a ritual for your journey. Take it literally;
The time for reflection and the figurative is in the future.
1. Place the butterfly in folded hands of prayer until the wings
can be spread across the land you leave behind.

                    2. Make a wish in a body of water that's new to you both,

casting the tokens far or close (as long as they stay behind
with any remaining apprehensions)

                    3. In the final dark before your arrival,

            scatter glitter like ashes and light your candles, so 

each reflection of light on gold manifests a glimmer of

creativity in your future together

Final cover and spine, with new details, typewritten titled

Plans for Abby and Mark's ritual, the book, the spine

The new cover, step one; details for cover and spine,
typewritten

Details for inside cover page: Safe Travels for Those Who Love:
                Abby & Mark

original and altered page one, with room for
notes from the ritual

original and altered page: May the next trip you take together
be the first in a series of memorable journeys
Safe travels to you both, and to the love between you two
a message to the traveling newleyweds

Title Page

Gluing the edges of the pages, after the first
pages, and title page, to prepare the book
block for dremeling compartments

Traces the ritual objects, dremel the shapes, create
a border with gesso, use a similar process to
embellish and unify the ritual objects page with
gold tissue paper

The Ritual

Using Every Part of the Animal

This is an old photo album I found at the Reninger Extravganza flea
market, and then gutted.

These are the guts from the album, used to frame a few
things around my room.

Rolls of paper for the new album book block

Book block cut and clamped, ready for binding

Binding materials: white corrugated linen thread, curved needle,
beeswax. Binding using coptic stitch

Book block binding complete

Book block ready to be glued into gutted cover, and completed

Completed album with end pages as the finishing touches