Artists’ Books – 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 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 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 August 29, 2013September 7, 2014 by Alicia Bailey — Leave a comment

Indian Floral Patterns

Indian floral patterns

I finished this book in 2011 as part of that year’s Book A Week project. I’m posting about it now because it is currently on view in the Bound and Unbound II exhibit at the University of South Dakota. My book is in great company in this exhibit – so many much admired book artists also have work in the show.

I haven’t seen the exhibition but the link to the online catalog is here, and the artist listing is here.

It is one of but a handful of altered books I’ve worked on, this one starting with Indian Floral Patterns, from Series I of the Victoria and Albert Colour Books.
I’ve also altered a second in the V&A Series – Tile Paintings from Series II.

Alicia Bailey Indian floral patterns pages

For Indian Floral Patterns I cut 3 round holes through the front cover and all of the pages. In the recesses formed by the holes rest four bone beads hand-carved in India. The beads are protected when the book is closed with mica laminated in between the first end page and first few pages of the text block. Circular paper cut outs in a range of sizes, picturing the same floral patterns depicted in the book, have been collaged onto the individual pages, obliterating the text.

The book is housed in a custom clamshell box and is available for purchase here.

Posted on August 28, 2013September 7, 2014 by Alicia Bailey — Leave a comment

Bliss

Alicia Bailey WIP Bliss5

Each year the Morgan Conservatory in Cleveland, Ohio, sponsors a fundraising event called the Snail Mail Paper Trail. Artists are sent two sheets of handmade paper, made at the Morgan, and asked to create an artwork from one or both of the sheets. The artworks are then auctioned at the October Gala. I’ve been participating since 2009 (see Snail) and Yearning for Morgan.

Alicia Bailey WIP Bliss1

My two sheets of paper (one sheet each of white and dark gray cotton abaca blend) arrived at the studio on the same day I opened a set of Julie Chen and Barbara Tetenbaum’s Ideation Deck

(if you don’t know about this wonderful tool for book related projects, you should . . . click here). I dealt the following cards, eliminating the paper category:
layout: in the form of a diagram, chart, or map
technique: high-tech (letterpress, offset, printmaking, etc
text: collaborate with writer or poet
image: none
Paper: provided
structure: innovative (tunnel book, magic wallet, carousel, flag book, etc.
color:single color
adjectives:
dissonant, traditional or historical, sculptural, impressionistic, poetic
Morgan 2013

The result is Bliss – an accordion fold book using a quote from Portia Masterson’s Bicycling Bliss.

Bliss is an enduring form of contentment derived from being fully present and practicing simplicity, moderation, self-nurture, reflection & conscious breathing.

Alicia Bailey WIP Bliss4

Granted the structure isn’t particularly innovative; I had originally thought this would be a tunnel book but had to redesign because the cut paper pages were too delicate.

After designing the pages in Adobe Illustrator,

Alicia Bailey WIP Bliss2 the pages were lasercut

Alicia Bailey WIP Bliss3

and mounted between two translucent sheets of Japanese kozo paper, folded up as an accordion and cased in to a hard cover. Only one edge is attached, so the accordion will unfold to display the entire quote.

The book will be auctioned off at this years’ Annual Benefit and Silent Auction: Opposites Attract on October 5. There will be nearly 200 works from local, national and international artists; its worth a trip to Cleveland!

Posted on October 10, 2011September 7, 2014 by Alicia Bailey — Leave a comment

Privileges and Discipline

This book re-purposes pages from a collaborative project I worked on when I was actively involved (as visitor/volunteer) with a now defunct therapeutic community (Cenikor).

Therapeutic communities are drug-free environments in which people with addictive (and other) problems live together in an organized and structured way in order to promote change and make possible a drug-free life in the outside society. The therapeutic community forms a miniature society in which residents, and staff in the role of facilitators, fulfill distinctive roles and adhere to clear rules, all designed to promote the transitional process of the residents.

The original project was a game board made of sixteen 8 inch square paintings, each painting referencing an aspect of the TC system of privileges and disciplines. Dissatisfied with some of the paintings, I dissembled the game board years ago and this week am turning it into an accordion style book, using some of the phrases that used to be so familiar to me but now have lost their resonance.

The text was imaged via laser etching directly onto the canvas paintings, the pages hinged with acrylic tinted tyvek. The case cover is paste-cloth, the end pages paste paper.

The Colorado based Cenikor was closed in 2004; its demise due to internal abuses of residents and staff of the sort the program was designed to help clients recover from. With three facilities still operating, Cenikor’s 24-36 month program is one of the toughest TC’s to graduate from. A clear majority of the residents are there by court order, few are able to successfully transition into drug and crime free lives.

My awareness of this particular TC began when my older brother was given an opportunity to go through the Cenikor program as an alternative to prison. Cenikor hosted a weekly open house, when approved family members and friends were allowed to come visit for two hours every Saturday evening. I remember many a Saturday driving over, listening to the local jazz station’s Saturday night blues hour en route.

It was tough watching the slow, agonizing and too often unsuccessful process of addicts struggling against odds so clearly stacked against them; working to re-build their lives on crumbling foundations, so much already lost to them. It was tough watching the visiting families, my own included, holding on to shreds of hope that their loved one would be one of the few to ‘make it’.

My volunteerism was limited to helping some of the residents apply for, and happily be granted, amnesty from outstanding IRS debts, thus helping to eliminate one of the many anxieties living responsibly entails.

This is taken from the frontspiece of the book:

In 1967, a group of inmates in a Colorado state penitentiary, who were committed to breaking the cycle of substance abuse and the criminal behavior that supports their addictions, established Cenikor, a residential therapeutic community.

Therapeutic communities typically employ a system of phases, privileges and disciplines for their residents (clients) in order to promote change and make possible a drug-free life in the outside society. The therapeutic community forms a miniature society in which residents, and staff in the role of facilitators, fulfill distinctive roles and adhere to clear rules, all designed to promote the transitional process of the residents.

In 2004 the Colorado facility, the original Cenikor, shut down operations following the suspension of the nonprofit group’s license by the Colorado Department of Human Services because of alleged improprieties.

Complaints included the manufacture of methamphetamines on site, prostitution, intimate involvement of staffers with female clients and welfare fraud.
Three other Cenikor facilities, in Texas and Louisiana, still operate.

Posted on October 2, 2011September 7, 2014 by Alicia Bailey — Leave a comment

Hearts for Marcia – October 2, 2011

My dad loved to make things. My dad loved my mom. He liked making things to tell her how much he loved her. Every year for many years, on Valentine’s Day, he made her a piece of jewelry with a heart motif.

I made a book that holds many of the hearts he made her.

Most of the pages are made with wood I saved from his wood shop after he died. He used both cherry and poplar for instrument soundboards (his making of harpsichords as a vocation was started when he made another love gift for my mother – a harpsichord. That story is expanded on in my project Theia Mania). He planed down wooden planks to about 1/8 inch and edge joined them for the soundboards. He saved even the smallest bits of leftover materials, so when he died there were several lengths of soundboard scrap.

The wooden hearts he made from alderwood and ebony, again byproducts from the harpsichords. Many instrument makers buy pre-made keys but my dad made them himself. He shaped ebony, poplar and basswood for the keys; he also routed out the rosettes (of rosewood) that appear on the front edge of the keys. Some of the keyboards were reversed – the main keyboard (white keys) of ebony, the sharps and flats poplar.

To accommodate the thickness of the hearts, I suspended each heart with a length of thread in between two layers of wood with identical windows cut out (yes, I used the laser cutter for this, and to create the sewing holes in one step).

He wasn’t a particularly innovative jewelry designer but had silversmithing skills and tools and often made simple pieces of jewelry, again for my mother. Committed to principles of re-purposing long before those principles reached the trendy status they now how, he melted down silver coins to create jewelry. Most of wood hearts were also wrapped with a silver braided wire, or had metal embedded into them.

Later he started messing around more with epoxy resins and one of the last hearts he made is a swirl of color shaped into a heart.

I always enjoy these times of working with the same materials he used, often using the very tools he used. This book exemplifies the negative aspect of my allegiance to finishing a book each week in that the level of craft is not up to the standard set by my father.

This book measures 3 1/4 x 3 1/2 x 3 5/8 deep and has 9 pages, plus 2 covers

Posted on September 18, 2011September 7, 2014 by Alicia Bailey — Leave a comment

Venus and Mars

My father (Tom Bailey) and his aunt, the woman who raised him (he was orphaned at 9), were both born in September. He was born on September 15, 1929 and died in 2006. His aunt Ruth was born on September 23, 1899 and died in December of 1998.

I don’t know if it is related to their birth dates, but over the years I’ve noticed that thoughts of them both surface more in the fall than during other times of year.
I like to think about them both. They are the two in my family whose personality traits my own are most akin to. Intelligent, educated, filled with curiosity, fascinated with the physical world, and introverted. Ruth was passionate about the organic structure of the world she knew and studied biology. Tom studied the physical structure of objects and relationships between them and became a mechanical engineer. I find solace in the handling and manipulation of objects and became an artist. I have an archive rich with objects belonging to them both and often include items from those archives in my personal studio work.

As most parent/child relationships are, my relationship with my father was a complex one, and one that shifted throughout the years. He knew me most of my life. I say most of because he suffered from dementia in has later years and wasn’t at all sure who I was for the last bit.

He, like me, was socially awkward, and although he had a brilliant and creative mind, was filled with self-doubt. He relished his solitude and appreciated the life of experience and sensation as well as the life of the mind. He was filled with emotions he seemed fearful of expressing.

Ruth, whether by character or social constraints of the time, also had difficulty expressing the love she felt. I think of my dad as emotionally tone-deaf. Do I think of myself in this same way? Sometimes.

So this week I made a book/assemblage from an astronomy book that moved from Ruth’s house to mine when she died. The unbound pages are collaged boards; recessed areas hold images of both Ruth and my father overlaid with mica. Each page has two circular cut outs that allow them to fit over round wooden assemblages attached to the inside covers of the book. The book is primarily, but not entirely, built from the original Astronomy book. The assemblages built with items and materials from both Ruth and Tom’s archives.