Grief is a book you can neither open nor close. The text runs through the pages like a work through an apple and reads, “Around and around and around. This cage is mostly air.”
It spins like a top and the wires spiral the way damaging thoughts gain purchase in your head and won’t let go.
Hope: bright and delicate with a dark core; costly.
I was repairing Grief after it had been damaged when I no longer felt that intense and chaotic despair, and I realized that Grief needed a companion.
This is a book about alternatives.
Handbound in leather dyed by the artist with raised panels, engraved brass hand, and traditionally tooled gold leaf stars.
Listen is a book of many folded facets that speak to the vast expanse of space.
Suspended on two iron rods in salvaged wood.
This book is a portrait of my home.
This is an engineered accordion with architectural drawings on the pages.
“I AM” is part book, part sculpture. The square wooden frame is four feet by four feet, with the shredded pages hanging about fourteen inches past the bottom of the frame. Opening the book means turning it from upside down to rightside up. The pages susurrate as they cascade into reading position. The text is black and white in a bold, unornamented, and approachable sans serif font, centered horizontally and vertically, filling much of the available space. The staggered prints lined up perfectly in order to convey the message.
The book was made over a period of months in 2020 in response to a confluence of events: pandemic, a 13-year-old boy’s suicide, George Floyd’s murder, widespread protests, and the presidential election. The words are drawn from Sylvia Plath’s, The Bell Jar. The main character swims out to sea as far as she can in an attempt to drown herself. She says, “I took a deep breath and listened to the old brag of my heart. I am, I am, I am.” In a world where people are made to feel that their lives are meaningless, the words, “I am,” are an affirmation of life. They are a heartbeat. They are both hopeful and defiant, much like the protest posters from the civil rights movement stating, “I AM A MAN.”
“I am,” is a phrase that appears in much of my work. Sometimes it is a question; sometimes, an argument. Always an invitation to see. An urge to be open, honest, and vulnerable. This book was created to perform a function. Do you, when you look at it, fill with awe at the worth of your own soul? If so, then this book has done its job.
