This early morning walk quickly turned into this!
This week I went to a wine tasting at the new wine shop in town. Unbelievable selections. Now I have even more bottles to find room for here at home.
I caught the moon early one morning. Sometimes it wakes me up to have a look.
Then it pulls up another morning.
I said last week I would post pictures of artworks based on poems. So what I found are three interpretations of the Owning Stones (Stone Stories) poem.
First this tiny book, only 1.75″ by 2″ sits in a bowl with other stones and the interpretations of this particular book form from fellow collaborators. They could make their little books be about whatever they chose. I only made enough blank books for each of us. I chose the inserted slot book where every other double page is slipped into a slit in the fold of the next. No stitching. No glue. You can see some of theirs in the stone bowl.
I love how the rough finish of this book feels in the hand…almost like picking up a stone.
Then the same words with small wood engravings I made of some of my own stones. This is the first of two boxed small editions.
The text of the poem is printed so as to fit into the spine of the folios where the engravings are printed.
I enjoyed figuring where text and images would appear as pages were turned. Then went on to do another small boxed edition smaller in size but using the same wood engravings to print the images. Here those images are fitted individually into slots with corners hidden between the folded pages.
Here is the closed box, followed by the opening.
The ribbon lifts the book out.
The book is a continuous concertina sized to have text printed on the right of every other page and then the engraved print fitted into slots on the facing blank page.
When stretched out and standing upright, you have the sense of placing the stones another time. With the prints cut to the same size, they are easy to rearrange. And by having the prints separate, I did not have to worry about tossing out the whole book if a print did not turn out well. I loved doing these books several years ago, but my favorite is still the tiny one kept in the bowl with stones and other stories.
Next week I might feature another book that is bound according to the content of the text.
Of course next week the midterm elections will be over here in the US. This morning was a family call…the kind where we check in on each other. I told them of being in the grocery store when a local activist friend asked how I was doing in these difficult times. I said there was not a way to express the sadness, the grief, the hatred, the anger that I carry now. The closest is probably “bereft”. If I were younger, just by ten years, maybe I would not be so sunken into this feeling.
But I am not. I am eighty-two. And this is what fellow citizens willfully chose for our last years on this earth. When I was growing up and taking advantage of all the ways I could educate myself, opportunities to learn were everywhere you looked. I thought we are capable of knowing so much more…so much at our finger tips. I thought everyone was on board with knowing. No where did I see how much of their own ignorance needed to be supported by others who harbored the same fear of those who looked different, spoke different, lived different….and no way did I foresee how easily their fears could be manipulated to put the most despicable people into positions of power.
Hopefully the change so desperately needed will begin this next week and hit its full stride come January. Hopefully.
As for me, I will lose myself in drawing, writing and working on all those bottles of wine….one sip at a time.
Til later…