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. 

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

a proposal

The Women's Studio Workshop in Rosendale, New York, has a grant for book artists. The deadline was for Nov. 15 and I sent in my proposal. It included a written proposal, budget, and mock up for the intended book. Here's what I did from October to November.

Guess who's back:

This is the mock up, and includes illustrations of the pages in photoshop,

layout for the printed layers, and fabric swatches.

This Little Skeleton might just seem like more of the same, but it is something that I feel needs the chance to be produced on a larger scale. I would also love the opportunity to incorporate old books and linens, since this is the direction my other work is heading. There are just so many materials already at our disposal...and we treat that literally. We waste so much. I don't want to make a huge statement. I don't think sustainability has the novel luxury of statement making, anymore. Our new evolution is inherently regarding a resource as its life span and resting place. The artistic process can be beautifully adapted to making old things new-process in place of processing and discarding. We give so little thought to where everything and everyone goes at its end- from wastefulness to our morbid interpretations of memorials as headlines-I don't want to get too universal. (I hear myself making everything the same, too often). But, at the least, everything and everyone deserves the same consideration and respect, including the future that we have no tangible rights to.

I hear back by February 1st.