a little catch-up

Here are the back and front views of a quilt I completed for my neice, in December of 2007. Not such great photos but all I had time for -- since I finished for Christmas and shipped it on the 22nd! The pattern is "garden path." I called this "Chloe's Garden."

dia de los muertos

This last altered-book project is a three-page spread that takes advantage of the unique construction of the book. This is a large-format picture book with pop-ups and flaps. Only the first few pages of the book were printed; the rest is blank white, still containing the added features. The originating artist found the unprinted book in a second-hand book store for 75 cents and rightly discerned its wealth of potential.

She chose the book's Dia de los Muertos theme. My piece incorporates a facing page (left), the back cover of the book on the inside complete with the nine inset rectangles, and a flap that folds over the back cover interior. This flap has been machine cut to create a "window" of pierced paper in the image of a dragon climbing a flowering tree. My work was simply to decorate and adapt the three-page spread.

The book is about 9 1/2" by 11" by 1 3/4" in size, closed. The left-hand page is completed using laser transfer emulsion, laser print, acrylic paint, stamping and tissue paper. The flap on the right is completed using acrylic paint and tissue paper. The central collection of insets is mixed media and includes a variety of found objects, cloth, acrylic paint, laser transfer, waxed cookie wrappers ("Ines Rosales"), beads and etc.

June/July Book Arts Round Robin

It's true. Until I picked up the latest round-robin book back on the 16th, I accomplished just this: one window curtain in my kid's room. Haven't even made the other one yet. But I'm cranking away at the Dia de los Muertos theme of the new book, and once I get through my second reading of the Harry Potter series, I might just (gasp!) sew another curtain. Fallow periods happen.

from the Altered Book Round Robin

March 09.

Excerpt from "On Writing An Illinois Poem" by James McGowan.

Artwork created within an old geography textbook.

Surely the People Are Grass

An oddly cropped photo of "Surely the People Are Grass" - and a detail (sort of, below).
Click on the photos for enlargements.
Size 13.5x17.5 inches.
Fabric, beads, yarn, string; and 6 pieces from my collection of paper objects that wash up in the clean laundry. (Laundry findings.)

Isaiah 40:6-8









A detail, taken before several formal problems were resolved. After adding Mr. Robin to the death image -- hope for resurrection and eventual springtime. Faith in renewal.

coming attractions

Views from the most recent Altered Book Round Robin...and a little progress on "Grass." (Tonight I saw my own altered book, the little one I started back in November, being passed from the fourth to the fifth artist on its road to immortality. It appears as though someone has made a little carrying case for it!!! I so wanted to peek, but I think that's a little like ultrasound -- legal, even wise in some cases, but taking the fun out of uncertainty.)