Artist Books
Wild Books, Leaf and Tree Texts
How could a book, something so inherently human made, appear instead as an unusual form of nature? Could it seem to be created out in the wilderness without traditional tools and materials? The Wild Book series and the Tree and Leaf Texts series explore this idea. The origins of the sculptural books are interconnected with the fantastical ecosystems that grow and evolve from the discarded debris of a commodified culture.
Like the elements in my installations, the books are improvisations on the structures of plant and animal life. Keeping in mind the color, textures, and forms I wish to extrapolate from nature, I develop handmade paper from abaca fiber and pigments to form my books. Pages are composites of leaves, fern parts, insect antennae, branches, skins, fins and wings. Some have leafy pages and burst with sprouts and tendrils, caught in the midst of growing. They are collections of my own hybrids of nature.
These books are exhibited individually. I also incorporate the books into installations. In Natural History I and II they reside in a tangled microcosm. I build these installations to bring wildness to the order of manmade spaces. Each one is a vibrating ecosystem with its own rhythms and distinctive species - unpredictable and in the midst of transformation.
