Thursday, January 26, 2012

Introduction to my ALAW

I am new to trying to do A Letter A Week.  What I've been doing is stitching with Jude Hill (link) working on my cloths.  My work for this year is a type of "tribute" to Emily Dickinson and her fascicles.  These are her "pamphlets" that she stitched while writing/composing her poems.  During her life she actually stitched 40 fascicles.  These could be viewed as her first "published" poems (very few were actually published during her life time.)  I am a recently retired art librarian (my stomping grounds where at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago - the school that actually started the Art Institute's Collection.)  I retired in September to take care of my mom who is dealing with dementia.  My love of books, combined with my need to do something while I am my mother's caregiver, is what is the motivation behind my work.  I use to do binding - traditional and also the creative kind that is what has become known as "artists' books" although the definition of what an artist's book is is very loosely defined and or hard to define. My blog where I post my fascicle project and stitched cloths is 81/2x11: thread reading (link) if you are curious to see more of the work.

For now I will show you what I have done so far with the idea of "pixel" - hoping my dashes will pass for pixels.  I have finished letters a-d (January's call).  Eventually this will be turned into a scroll type of book (peaking out at the right is the "structural" part where I will attach the scroll.)  It is a twig.  The fabric is all hand natural dyed cloth.  I use various materials: rust, walnuts, acorns, tea, etc. as the color source.  As many have stated, I'm not a calligrapher so this is the result of someone who doesn't do well drawing straight lines with a ruler.  I should mention, the color is dark so I will try and improve that.  I basically just wanted to introduce what I'm doing a take a stab at posting. Thank you.

3 comments:

  1. The concept is great. I love the connection to Emily D, and the 'old' look to these letters. Makes me think of the needlework of old pioneering Aussie women.

    ReplyDelete

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