Blog – Alicia Bailey + Ravenpress Studio Notes

Posted on January 11, 2025 by Alicia Bailey — Leave a comment

Youth Education – mid-20th Century style

2025-01-11 15.32.30.

My great aunt, Ruth Wheeler took on the care and raising of my father when he was orphaned at an early age; my friends had grandmothers – I had a great aunt. She was a trusted and interesting elder, but not at all warm and cuddly. She and my dad spent as much time in the Colorado Rockies as they could manage – they are pictured above on one of their adventures.

Although our shared time was sporadic, it was significant. Her demeaner, lifestyle and interests have had a lasting impact on me, Ruth was a dedicated educator and organizer, her commitment to youth advocacy steadfast and lifelong. Until just a few years ago, I was able to share memories of her with some of her former students; many of whom still remember her vividly as a junior high biology teacher, although she retired from teaching in 1964.

I was the niece she was closest to, and, with her blessing, I took on the stewardship of her leavings both before and after her death in 1998. She was 99 years old when she died – lucid and still curious about the world around her until just hours before her death. There was a magnificent snowstorm the day of her funeral so I missed it. I instead spent the day watching dozens of ducks fly in various spiraling masses over a wetlands area – something I’d never seen waterfowl do before, and haven’t since.

Her archive included many publications on youth education, as well as folders full of handwritten notes and lesson plans. As I rummage around in these dusty bits of paper, I experience gratitude that I was educated in a time when analog ruled, when experiential learning wasn’t a specialty category but how one learned about the world. Ruth taught biology, and also worked outside the school cirriculum with various youth groups, heading up nature picnics, bird watching field trips and camping trips. She was also an amateur photographer. Using some of her notes and photographs I’ve created 2 (very limited) artists’ book works editions, Botany Education and Zoology Education.

Creating unique works, working in series or with variable limited editions allows me to add complex and time consuming elements to my work without getting too stuck in the time suck and tedium of production. Elements such as half round pages in a shaped tray and hand embroidered or hand inked text. Making decisions and selections of base materials and structures that enhance the overall has long been one of my priorities as evidenced in these bookworks.

Botany Education v.2 i.

Botany Education (2022) presents text extracted from Ruth’s notes on using botany for youth education. Images are digital reproductions from her photographic archive and date from 1928 – 1964. The text is embroidered using 2 strand floss on linen backed kozo paper that has been handprinted using botanical specimens and relief plates. End pages are Nidiggen paper printed from shaped wood plates. Covers are botanical printed sheepskin over shaped boards with floss embroidery.

Botany Education v.2 c.

Housed in a custom, drop-spine box with a shaped, recessed tray. The tray bottom has an original colored pencil drawing protected with cast acrylic that becomes visible with a hinged platform is lifted to facilitate lifting the book from the tray.

Zoology Education e.

Zoology Education (2023) presents text extracted from her notes on using zoology for youth education. Images are digital reproductions from her photographic archive and date from 1935 – 1974. The text is hand-written with India ink on parchment. The pages are rag printmaking paper hand-printed from copper engravings. End pages are handmade paper. Covers are vellum; the text block laced in with soft leather strips.

Zoology Education b.

Housed in a custom, drop-spine box with a recessed tray. The tray bottom is lined with sheepskin on which rest zoological specimens (a sea turtle bone in variant 1; 2 mounted moths in variant 2). The case is covered with book cloth that has been airbrushed with metallic acrylic. Case labels are laserprint on treated paper.

Posted on September 16, 2023 by Alicia Bailey — Leave a comment

Working with the Words of Others – Carolyn Hull

Lake City CO

During the last 20 years of the 20th century, I lived in a small mountain town in the San Juan mountains of southwestern Colorado. I’ve yet to find a more magnificent mountain range. Living in this town, which had a year-round population of 125 when I arrived, and now boasts 416, was by turns difficult, splendid and bewildering. Many of us who lived there in the 1980’s-90’s believe that period to be one of the best times to have lived there. Most of my Lake City friends have since moved on, many others have died. Why was it so good? Perhaps because private investors were supporting a much needed rebuild of the historic downtown area, saving buildings from ruin and keeping dozens of master carpenters employed. Those same investors pooled their wits and resources and revived the Merchant and Miner’s bank – a bank was something the town needed yet hadn’t had for many years. Now I’m getting to the point of this post.

In the early 90’s the bank hired Carolyn Hull for a loan officer position and it is in her memory I write this post. Carolyn was a writer, mother and good friend, not only to me, but to the community. Spurred on by a generous and creative spirit, she hosted writing retreats and arranged for other contemporary writers to visit our town. She arranged potlucks and gatherings that helped break the monotony of winter. If you’ve never lived in a small, remote town, where winters are dark, cold and long, you may not know how welcome this sort of energy can be. Over the years I asked permission to use four of her texts for my own Ravenpress projects and she of course readily agreed.

Alicia bailey mexico stories 2

Alicia bailey mexico stories 1

Mexico Stories, produced in 1997, was the first (and only) limited edition I to produced in a sizable quantity (100!). With few resources other than old school digital, I tipped in photographs I’d taken and printed on washi paper using an inkjet printer. To present the three stories as distinct but unified I chose what I call a ‘dos-a-dos-a-dos’ binding – back to back to back. The covers are a rich terra cotta paste paper, with hand-dyed cotton cords with coconut shell beads attached.

1997 was also the year I learned about the popularity of miniature books. In the US a miniature is any book measuring less than 3 inches in all dimensions, in the UK the standard is 4 inches. I started producing limited edition artists’ books and, insecure about my own writing skills, always used the writings of others. This was a savvy move as working in miniature hones hand and ‘eyeballing’ skills and precision. There is the additional benefit of miniatures being very easy to sell.

Alicia bailey o of october 2

My next Carolyn Hull book I called O of October. It’s a round, accordion miniature housed in a round box, in an edition of 20. This one was based on a poem by Carolyn called October is a Month of Bones (anyone who has lived during hunting season in a mountain town will understand the reference is to hunting season, not Halloween). Adorned with a small, hand carved skull bone on the lid, this was indeed easy to sell to minature collectors. It is out of print.

Lovely as it is to have a ready made market for works based entirely on size, I wanted to push the envelope a little and see how work that had more difficult content fared with collectors. This I did with a poem Carolyn wrote a poem Hunting the Burn. Her words explore the similarities between the moment of firing a gun at a live target and the moment of orgasm, that moves beyond this simple comparison to explore a variety of experience.

Hunting the burn 1

Hunting the burn

Using her text I produced Hunting the Burn, in an edition of 20. Again relying on paste paper and digital printing, for this one I added stencil patterning, utilized window cut outs and housed the book in an elaborate paper mache box, with a live shotgun shell mounted on the top. This early example of creating a very specific habitat to house my books continues to this day. Whether due to content or the difficulty storing such an awkward box, this wasn’t an immediate sell out. As of this writing there are 3 copies available for purchase (contact me for details).

Alicia bailey anguine 2

Alicia bailey anguine 3

My last project using Carolyn’s writing was Anguine, produced in 2001 in an addition of 14. Weary of miniatures, by this time I’d switched to larger format books, and also relied less on digital printing. Anguine relates what could be a memory, or perhaps a dream, of a titillating experience under a southwestern sky. Again in a custom box, the covers include onlays of snakeskin sheds. The imagery was produced with mono printing techniques, the text is laser toner transfer. There are still a couple of copies of this book available at the moment.

Next week I will be returning to Lake City, the town where I feel like I grew up, even though I moved there when I was 22. I don’t visit there much these days – the mountains remain magnificent but I have little in common with the current demographics of the town’s rotating population. It is always a bittersweet to visit. Next week’s visit is sure to be more bitter than sweet as I’m going to attend Carolyn’s memorial toast.

Posted on July 19, 2023 by Alicia Bailey — Leave a comment

Frogs . . . and Words

As I prepare for some fall exhibitions (Diving In and Westward Bound II), I ponder how similar my approach to ideation and creation of both book works and of exhibitions is. Both are lengthy and complex processes with side roads heading off in unexpected directions encountered along the way. I’m writing this post to provide a bit of backstory for a limited edition artists’ book I produced in 2020 – Evanesco: a selection of beleagured frogs. Ready? – here we go!

Evanesco spark install a

Although not a hard core wordsmith, I maintain an evolving word stash of favorite words and phrases (many somewhat archaic); words I admire for their aesthetic appeal in written form, that possess arrangement of consonants and vowels that is compact and efficient, making them easy to correctly pronounce, and that have an interesting origin and meaning. Evanesco is such a word.

I first encountered evanesco while researching frogs from the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species.

Craugastor evanesco redlist

Craugastor evanesco – Vanishing Robber Frog.

The word may be familiar to Harry Potter fans as it is the name of the Vanishing Spell. It’s now on my list of favorite words and I used it as title for both a limited edition book work and 2021 solo exhibition.

Evanesco spark install Ballas j

In 1920 my great aunt, Ruth Wheeler, was taking biology classes at the University of Kansas. Her drawings and notes were recorded in standard lab notebooks with pale blue covers, three holes punched along the left margin, each page with a printed pale blue margin. These were turned in, evaluated, returned to the students and, in the case of my aunt, saved in boxes, most likely seldom referred to or forgotten, until I came along and carried them back to my studio (with Ruth’s blessing) to join the manyl other boxes that form an archive of her life and work.

Some of the biology notebooks pages were used as prompts for collaboration when I was working with Spondere, but most of them remained quietly in my studio … waiting.

With it being 100 years later, 2020 seemed a good time to figure out a way to use more of these drawings. 2020 was an anxious time for many of us; for me things like doodling, coloring, tracing and so forth were useful tools to control anxiety. I camped quite a bit in summer of 2020, always accompanied by a box of various in progress projects, so I added the notebooks and a gel ink pen and began over inking the faint pencil marks of Ruth’s notes and drawings of frog dissections.

Back in the studio, I decided to paint some frogs over the biology pages using some images from books but mostly from the IUCN Red List of Endangered Species as visual source material. Still not sure where this was going, but suspecting it was going somewhere interesting, I treated all the biology pages with diluted PVA, which provides a lovely, transparent ground for ovepainting with oil. I selected 17 species of frogs from the Red List (based almost entirely on their looks) and spent many hours staving off anxiety by painting images of frogs.

SS Critically Endangered Panamanium Golden frog

I further developed the idea of presenting these frogs, with details of their endangered state, in book form. I made a few models then settled on a wire-edge binding variation of rigid pages, diamond shaped with one side lopped off. The result is a book that, although very sturdy, is somewhat precarious when displayed open and upright.

Evanesco f

The images were scanned, then printed on hand-dyed Mohawk superfine text with archival inks on a Canon Pixma.

Evanesco g

I included information about the distressing state of the many species of frogs that are listed on the Red List as endangered via handwriting in red ink the common name and Latin name of each species, along with its Red List status and population status (increasing/decreasing or stable). I also included a bar graph and pie chart that indicate the reasons for widespread extinction and endangered status of frogs worldwide. A summary of my own feelings about all this is summed up with words that appear on the corner blocks that hold the book in place in the box tray:

Blake believed that the object of being human is to learn how to be human. Will we learn to be human in time? To live up to our full capacities in time to save ourselves? To save the world that is vulnerable to us? To fail will bring on a greater tragedy than we can possibly imagine.

Evanesco a

I really enjoy painting on surface treated paper so I decided to hand paint labels for each of the 9 copies, plus labels for the spine and front cover of the drop spine box I designed to house the book. The covers of both the book and box are created using multiple layer of shellaced book board that is textured with acrylic modeling paste, painted with acrylic and finished with top coat of pigment mixed with cold wax medium, buffed to a soft sheen. I couldn’t find any book cloth of the right color so I airbrushed dilute acrylic onto some tan, paper backed Verona book cloth.

Evanesco h

Postscript

A copy of Evanesco: a selection of beleagured frogs was purchased by the British Library in 2022 and included in the 2023 Animals in Art exhibition and catalog at the British Library. The catalog entry, shown below, closes with this:

The dissemination of scientific knowledge can follow many routes. The success of Evanesco lies in its ability to distill current data into a visually engaging form that uses art to deliver its message. Though on the surface Evanesco can be seen as a sombre book, it also brings with it an element of hope by helping to raise awareness of the conservation issues faced by this group of animals. Every opportunity to bring these concerns to light is a positive step and, over time, could help these species recover.

British Library Animals Evanesco page proof

Evanesco was also awarded the certificate of artistic excellence by the Puget Sound Book Artists and is held by University of Denver Special Collections, Colorado State University Special Collections, Emory University Special Collections.

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Posted on April 21, 2018September 21, 2018 by Alicia Bailey

This time Is whatever I want it to be

During the late nineties and early teens, I collaborated with another artist, Heidi Zednik. We’d met when we were both in residence at Dorland Mountain Art Colony. I had the entire run of a second floor studio – one half was my living quarters, the other my studio. Heidi was in residence as a writer – her cabin was dark, damp and cramped. Dorland is an odd place, where spontaneous socializing with others is discouraged, or so it was at the time. On a parcel of land deeded to the Nature Conservancy, Dorland was mostly off-grid; communications with the off-site world were done via a pay-phone located in a small room directly below my rooms. Each night I heard a woman’s voice, talking on that phone into the night. Her voice was a modulating hum, her words indistinguishable. Often I fell asleep listening to the sound of her voice.

Dorland Mountain Art Colony

About a week into our month long residency, there was a violent storm. I opened the door and three of the colony cats scurried in. After fighting to get the door closed again, the cats and I sat hunched on my bed – I had never experienced a storm like this, living as I had in land-locked Colorado. By first light the storm had passed. I went outside and saw evidence of the storm everywhere I looked. A large oak, uprooted by the wind, had blown down in the parking lot, landing on two of the vehicles parked there. As we residents stood around gawping at the damage, the social protocols of Dorland were set aside and I met Heidi, the woman whose voice I’d heard talking into the night.

Heidi holding one of the treasures from my aunt’s archive

So started my afternoon walks with Heidi. We meandered through nearby orange groves, the air heavy with citrus perfume, our walks often ending with a cup of tea in her dark writers cabin. As our time at Dorland neared its end, we agreed to meet up at other times, in other geographies. We considered various collaborative projects, then tossed them aside.

Heidi was traveling a lot; road trips across the country, a move back to her homeland, Austria, then settling in Asheville, North Carolina, where she purchased and improved a historic family cabin, the builders and owners of the cabin the only prior occupants. Meanwhile I inherited the archive of my great Aunt Ruth – a treasure trove of photographs, paper ephemera and biological specimens dating back several generations. You can read more about the Ruth Wheeler archive here.

Selection of objects from my aunt’s archive

In the crawl space of Heidi’s newly purchased but historic cabin were trunks filled with photographs, many of a man seated on a tricycle far too small for him, and bits of paper with lists of words. Heidi learned that this house, which had been in the same family for generations, was home to a differently abled fellow named Stanley. Stanley grew up and stayed in that house into adulthood. He loved wagons, tricycles and making word lists.

Play – one of our collaborative pieces from the Stanley archive

Heidi lived in the Blue Ridge Mountains of North Carolina; I lived in the San Juan Mountains in Colorado. Having both come into a stockpile of ephemera around the same time, we struggled with wanting to use the ephemera but found it somehow too precious. Sharing the ephemera seemed like a way to begin. So we began mailing letters, photos, handwritten lists, old school notebooks etc. back and forth – each of us making our marks on these paper bits. We called this first collaborative project, which went on for several years, Notes from the Underground.

While we were working on a suite of works on engineering vellum that we called Flight Notes, Heidi mailed me a bit of paper on which she’d written

‘this time is whatever I want it to be’

Flight Notes

This phrase continues to resonate. In spring of 2018 I used it as basis for a double pamphlet structure I was experimenting with. This nine word sentence says enough – no need to embellish. So to flesh out the content of the book, I re-wrote the text in binary code. Here it is, page by page. It is now held by Special Collections at Topeka and Shawnee County Public Library.

Posted on March 27, 2017September 6, 2018 by Alicia Bailey — Leave a comment

Tile Paintings

This piece is available. Click here to purchase.

Tile Paintings as an altered book created from a book published by The Victoria & Albert Museum. The V&A Museum, established in 1852, is the world’s leading museum of art and design.

The museum’s opening followed the very successful Great Exhibition of 1851. Held in the purpose-built Crystal Palace and organized by Henry Cole and Prince Albert, it was the first international exhibition of manufactured products. Its founding principle, and one which is followed to this day, was to make works of art available to all, to educate working people and to inspire British designers and manufacturers.

To this end, the V&A publishes about 30 books annually, working jointly with Penguin Random House and Thames and Hudson. In addition to promoting research, knowledge and enjoyment of the designed world, the publications generate profit for the museum. Current publications range from a charming children’s story by Jack Townend (A Story about Ducks $8US) to a Vivienne Westwood Opus Manifesto limited edition ($2700US).

The Colour Book series (published from 1985-1989) includes titles such as Decorative End Papers (1985), Patterns for Papers (1987), Japanese Stencils (1988), Novelty Fabrics (1988) and Ikats (1989). I have altered two books from this series, Tile Paintings (from Series 1 of the Colour books), and Indian Floral Patterns (also from Series 1). You can read my post about Indian Floral Patterns here.

The books are a lovely size to work with (8 x 5.5 x .5); each of the pages richly colored and most with little or no text. Tile Paintings piece is a pairing of the published book with four tile shards that were gifted to me years ago by a fellow scavenger.

Four shaped holes (roughly following the shape of the shards) have been cut through the cover and all of the pages; in the recesses rest the shards. The shards are protected when the book is closed with mica laminated in between the first end page and first few pages of the text block.

With a mix of PVA and methyl cellulose, I laminated several pages together, leaving me with four double-page spreads to work with. Hundreds of paper cut outs in various shapes and sizes (the cut outs based on the recessed shapes using full-color reproductions taken from the book’s pages) are collaged onto the individual pages, obliterating the text. Areas in between the collaged bits are hand painted with gouache and acrylic inks. Although the book stays closed on its own, there is an additional magnetic/ribbon closure.

I typically create a utilitarian single tray, drop-spine box for my artists’ books; for Tile Paintings I stepped up from the strictly utilitarian and created a box with the same color-reproductions lining the inside.

Posted on January 29, 2015September 6, 2018 by Alicia Bailey — Leave a comment

Wildflower Identification

From the Lovely and Amazing series, this limited edition book uses images, artifacts and writings from the archive of my great aunt, Ruth Wheeler. Ruth led a rich and varied life, passionate about both nature and teaching (she was a biologist with a teaching certificate). She had a big impact on how my views of the world were shaped. Creating my own works from that which she left me has brought me moments of joy and a bit of sadness too.

The general parameters of Wildflower Identification were partially set using the Ideation Deck (developed by Julie Chen and Barb Tetenbaum).

Cards I drew from the Ideation Deck were the starting point for this book.

Based on Hedi Kyle’s Blizzard Book (so called because Hedi developed the folded paper structure when a blizzard in Philadelphia kept her studio bound for a day), Wildflower Identification has 14 envelope pages created from one long sheet of Batik paper (imported from India).

I chose to work with this structure for a variety of reasons. The most obvious is my wish to present material non-linearly, allowing pages be removed and re-arranged. The content of the pages peeks out from that which contains them, reminiscent of plants peeking out, enticing a closer look. More obscurely, I chose this structure because it was developed by Hedi Kyle. I’m convinced that Hedi and Ruth would have enjoyed one another’s company had they ever met. Both have been role models for me. I am inspired by their excitement, curiosity and passion about their worlds, their lifelong willingness to share, educate and support those of us fortunate enough to have spent time with them.

Alicia Bailey and Hedi Kyle — Here I am with Hedi Kyle in Philly, 2013

The contents of the envelopes are cards, photographs or seed specimens adapted from Ruth’s archive. The three photographs are of teenage girls out on a seed and plant gathering adventure (taken on November 13, 1948), scanned, cropped and re-printed.

The cards duplicate Ruth’s handwriting and are taken from her many teaching files – these specific to teaching ‘her girls’ about plant identification and cultivation.

Tracing from original writings (right), finished cards (left).

Each book also contains three laminated seed and flower collections

and an original page from Chester A. Reed’s Flower Guide published in 1916, also laminated.

Page ready for laminating. Each book has a different original page from the 1916 book.

These, along with a title card (colophon on reverse) make up the contents of the book.

Some of the joys of designing and creating this book include time spent going through Ruth’s collections of photographs and writings, teaching my studio assistant Stefanie how to fold the pages (this is now one of her favorite activities and she has her own project in development utilizing the Blizzard Book), working with a rich, purple Nigerian goat (from Harmatan), a luscious and tactilely rewarding material, and making pastepaper for the project while listening to Western Bird Calls.

I used pastepapers inspired by Lucinda Carr for the text cards.

Note: several years ago, Lucinda Carr (invited me to her studio for a day of pastepaper production. Lucinda was producing and selling some fabulous paste papers and I was eager to learn her work methods. We set up and when it was time to go to work she said “This is my secret for making great paste papers – I listen to bird call identification recordings while I work”.

As I’ve worked with these materials, I’ve had not unpleasant moments of wistful sadness (sentimental nostalgia?). Some of this is related to missing Ruth but there is something else this material stirs up I me.

I’ve developed quite an attachment, crushes of a sort, to these girls (a few of whom are pictured again and again, on other outdoor, educational adventures, in Ruth’s photo albums), my emotional response based solely on impressions of who they may have been, these girls who so appreciated nature, whose curiosity and willingness to explore was endlessly nurtured by Ruth. I feel envious sometimes that I wasn’t one of “Ruthie’s girls” – many of them remained lifelong friends of Ruth’s and went on to nurture other young women throughout their own lives.

As I ruminate on the adventures Ruth’s archives document I feel a yearning to connect to my younger, more able-bodied, less educated self. I long to experience once again lovely stretches of time when activities such as of going out, alone or with others, to identify wildflowers the only mission aside from eating a picnic lunch in a wooded grove, perhaps near a running stream.

An archive of process materials is housed at University of Denver, Penrose Library, Special Collections.

Process materials for Wildflower Identification

Wildflower Identification is out of print.

Posted on December 31, 2014September 6, 2018 by Alicia Bailey — Leave a comment

Lovely and Amazing at University of Denver

I’m once again thrilled that the pieces I’ve created using from the archives of long-time Denver resident Ruth Wheeler will be on view in public spaces . . .

Lovely and Amazing is a series I began in 2006, is a tribute to Ruth Wheeler, beloved biology teacher, naturalist, youth advocate and feminist who lived and worked in north Denver for 70 years. Filled with curiosity, Ruth found the natural world a place of endless delight. She left behind a collection of biological specimens, notes and photographs which I have incorporated into a series of three-dimensional collages, boxes and book works. Wasp and Praying Mantis pictured below.

Nearly all the book works (and a few of the boxes) from the Lovely and Amazing series are on view at University of Denver’s library January 5 through March 29. The former Penrose Library, renamed Anderson Academic Commons after a complete remodel of the existing building, now houses curated exhibition areas throughout the three level structure. Thanks to the ongoing support of Special Collections librarian Kate Crow and Anderson Academic Commons exhibits curator Rebecca Macey, my work is on display on the main level, strategically located near the main entrance/coffee shop. The library’s generous open hours (24/7 during some weeks of the year) puts this at the top of the the list for Denverites and visitors looking to engage with interesting exhibits at odd hours.

On the top level of the library is the Gottesfeld Room where the bulk of their collection of artists’ books are stored in glass fronted cabinets. The room is open access during library hours but for hands on viewing of the books, visitors need to make an appointment with Special Collections, open from 9-5 Monday – Friday.

gottesfeld

Although I’m not a University of Denver “Pioneer” (i.e. alum), I am pleased beyond measure that Penrose Library Special Collections has taken on the role of designated repository of my work in the book arts field.

Alicia Bailey process materials

What this makes possible in terms of display are exhibits such as the 2013 exhibit in Special Collections in the lower level of the library featuring the process materials of one of my edition works, Burning Me Open, alongside process materials from a series of works by Laura Wait (whose book works are also collected by Penrose Library Special Collections, University of Denver).

The books from this series were also been exhibited at 23 Sandy Gallery in Portland in 2013.

Also on view at University of Denver are books of mine created in response to works in Lovely and Amazing, such as Mica (pictured below).

Posted on February 18, 2014September 7, 2014 by Alicia Bailey — Leave a comment

Two Plus at Spark

Two Plus – a series of box works I’ve been working on for several years, on view at Spark Gallery, North Annex, in Denver, Colorado January 30 – February 23 2014.

I work from the premise that an object is anything we can talk or think about (including intangibles such as emotions, beliefs, fears). More than one of any object creates a minimum of one relationship or connection; the more objects, the more connections. For me, examining the nature of objects involves considering how they are related to both their properties, and their connections with other objects.

I have taken on as my task the creation of connections between objects and the subsequent examination of the relationships between objects.

This task is a time consuming, painstaking process of achieving balance and accord with the disparate palette of colors, shapes and associations a varied object selection creates. The time spent selecting, caressing, arranging and perhaps fixing in place objects is time well spent as, in the words of the French philosophers Deleuze and Guattari,

“A life that makes the greatest number of connections to other things and alters itself in the process is a life lived to its fullest.”

For the Two Plus series, I’ve been working with objects that relate specifically to a characteristic embodied by either a particular individual, or to a time/place in my history that was governed in part by a specific characteristic. Thus the objects selected have either a direct link or strong associative link to these particular characteristics. The series as a whole has developed into an examination personalities both real and imagined.

Posted on October 1, 2013September 7, 2014 by Alicia Bailey — Leave a comment

Lovely and Amazing at Niza Knoll Gallery

Alicia Bailey l a viewers with maglite 1
This year I have been able to exhibit this multi-faceted body of work in two stellar locations. In June/July 2014 the Lovely and Amazing books were displayed at 23 Sandy Gallery in Portland, Oregon and this fall the boxes and 3-D collages in the series will be exhibited at Niza Knoll gallery in Denver.

Lovely and Amazing, begun in 2006, is a tribute to Ruth Wheeler, beloved biology teacher, naturalist, youth advocate and feminist who lived and worked in north Denver for 70 years. Ruth found the natural world a place of endless delight. She left behind a collection of biological specimens, notes and photographs which I have incorporated into a series of three-dimensional collages, boxes and book works.

Alicia Bailey Lovely and Amazing in progress

Ruth was my great-aunt, and, because she raised my father, her role in our family life was much as a grandmother’s might be. She was educated, reverent, passionate and endlessly curious. Unlike anyone else I have ever known, Ruth was an important figure in my childhood. Visits to her house might include walking her ferret around the block on a leash, trying to coax the giant snapping turtles to do more than lie around in the big wash tub in the back yard or agitating the miniature alligators that lived in the basement utility sink.
Scan

My favorite visits were those that included feeding the snakes from the stock of white mice that Ruth raised for that purpose. There was a kinkajou living in the basement. He had a peculiar odor but I nonetheless loved creeping down to the basement at night to watch his nocturnal pacing, his protruding eyes luminous in the dark.

Born in 1899, Ruth lived, lucid, independent and strong, well into her 99th year. Although other family members moved in and out of that house over the years, it was always Ruth’s house in my mind. This rotating roster of inhabitants seemed always to perch around the edges of the real inhabitants of the house, Ruth’s collections of creatures. Not pets, these birds, mammals, reptiles were collected, cared for and eventually preserved.

Alicia Bailey Frog box in progress

During her final decade, I stayed with her on my visits to Denver. I spent afternoons recording her as she told and re-told tales of her life. Concerned about what would happen to her collections, Ruth started gifting me with a variety of biological specimens. As I boxed up her various collections (things such as insect specimens, snakeskin’s in old jelly jars, stuffed birds on sticks, owl pellets, taxidermied small rodents, fossils and preserved plants) she told me stories. She told me about the ornithologist who taught her a down and dirty method of preserving birds and other small creatures and about the day she was called home from school when one of her king bull snakes escaped its cage and was coiled in the bathtub, my great-grandmother trying to retrieve it with a spatula.

Alicia Bailey Snake Box detail

Later, when readying her house for sale, I retrieved and stored many of the letters, photographs, family heirlooms she, along with other family members, had left behind. Seven years passed before I began incorporating these objects into my own studio work. I relish the days I spend in the studio working on this project, thinking of Ruth with a smile.

Posted on September 9, 2013September 7, 2014 by Alicia Bailey — Leave a comment

Testudines – a Lovely and Amazing box

Testudines is the order of reptile more commonly known as turtles, tortoises and terrapins. In addition to it being a great word (I have a fondness for multi-syllabic words with hard consonants in the middle), it is representative of a creature I was fascinated by as a child Alicia and turtle . I love this picture of me watching a snapping turtle in my aunt’s back yard.

Turtles appear in my dreams often; I rejoice when they do as I then wake refreshed and excited to face the day.

Testudines are some of the most ancient reptiles alive. The ones my aunt kept in the back yard for a time were most likely snapping turtles, big, slow and a little big scary because of the hissing sound they made. They seemed to spend more time napping then snapping and feeding them was not nearly as exciting as feeding the snakes was.

I’ve been working on an assemblage with specimens from Ruth’s archives – Testudines Box. This box assemblage is the 3^rd I’ve made using hardwood boxes that measure 12x6x7, two of the four corners curved rather than square.The two previous are Lepideptura Box and Bird Box.

To combat what I call ‘analysis paralysis’ when working with such a wealth of materials, I tend to develop a set of parameters for each series. For these boxes the parameters are:

1) specimen(s) from Ruth’s collection

2) photograph(s) of the lovely and amazing young women Ruth photographed

3) magnifying lens(es)

4) reproduction(s) of Ruth’s handwriting from her journals or teaching lessons

5) reproduction(s) of published materials used in her teaching

Testudines Box includes the shell of a Red Slider turtle along with the skull and jawbone of another Red Slider (this placed in a wooden box and magnified).

These artifacts are arranged in front of a color scan reproduction of the same turtle shell overlaid with mica.
The interior box walls are lined with a repetition of an Emily Dickinson poem written out by Ruth in her journal, the exterior walls with instructions for digging out a laying of turtle eggs from one of Ruth’s many nature education books, an encyclopedia entry and images of turtle anatomy from various published nature studies.