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- Brain Drawers
- CHOOSE HAPPY
- Diffuse Axonal Imagery
- The Girl Who Liked to Read
- If You Say it Loud Enough
- My (Discouragingly) White Life
- The Purple ABC
- Red Transformed
- Transformation Books #1-9
- Two Dances of Death
- Two Egg Poems
- Sex Lives of Vegetables: A Seed Catalogue
- Where Does Wisdom Come From?
After my son’s brain injury, if he couldn’t remember something, he would say “I know that information is in a drawer in my brain, but that drawer won’t open.” The text of Brain Drawers is hand-printed on tiny accordions inside the various drawers. Some drawers, older memories, open, but others, memories of things that happened in the months just before his accident, do not.
2015, North Bay, ON. 8 pages. (8 x 6 x 6 1/2″) Edition of 3. Ringling School of Art, Baylor University, Darling Biomedical Library, UCLA.
This book was created using Barbara Tetenbaum and Julie Chen's Artist's Book Ideation Cards. Using these cards is a great way to step outside the box. Instructed to use found text, I chose the title from a billboard and text from magazines. But one of the adjective cards said: Scientific or research-based, so I also consulted the library and have incorporated quotes from three books about happiness: Happy at Last, by Richard O'Connor, How We Choose to Be Happy, by Rick Foster and Greg Hines, and 14,000 things to be happy about, by Barbara Ann Kipfer. The elaborate accordion pop-up book has five spreads.>">
2018, Kingston, ON. 5 pages. (10 3/4 x 8 1/4 x 1 1/4″) Edition of 10. Baylor University Libraries, Special Collection; MIT, Rotch Library, Art and Architecture Collection; Queen's University, W.D. Jordan Special Collections Library; University of California, Davis, Special Collections Library; University of California, Los Angeles, Louise M. Darling Biomedical Library, University of Toronto, Victoria College, Pratt Library.
My son had a catastrophic brain injury suffering diffuse axonal injury. This book is my attempt to portray his injury visually. Paper pulp was cast in a mould for making jello for a Hallowe'en party (top) and a plaster mould made from a clay original which I sculpted myself (bottom.) I used the acetate circles to keep the threads from ripping through the paper, but realized, to my delight, that they resemble the electrodes that were attached to his head for his many EEGs.
2014, Kingston, ON. No pages. (6 x 8 x 6 1/2″) Edition of 3. Collections: University of Alberta Library, Bruce Peel Special Collections; University of California (Los Angeles) Biomedical Library; Uh oh, where is the other one? If you know, please let me know!
The text comprises two lists of books read: on the front is a list from the summer I was eighteen, the second from the fall of 2006, when I was artist in residence in Queen's University's Department of Women's Studies, doing research about our health and the environment. The images are India ink drawings of me reading, interspersed with covers of books I have enjoyed: again, on the front one will find books from my childhood, on the back, books I read as an adult.
2007, North Bay, ON. Double-sided flag book. (The Box is 8.25 x 9 x 2″ The book opens to about 51″) Unique. University of Alberta, Edmonton, Alberta.
This unique book uses found objects to explore children's rhyming games, using balls or skipping ropes, and the hand game called Cat's Cradle. The text consists of excerpts of these rhymes.
1998, North Bay, ON. 9 pages. (8 x 5 1/2 x 5 1/2 1/2″) Unique. Collection of the University of Calgary
My (Discouragingly) White Life
In her book "Learning to be White: Money, Race and God in America, theologian Thandeka suggests that white people play what she calls The Race Game. It has only one rule: for a week, one must preface any mention of a family member, colleague, friend etc. of European descent with the term "white." From this came the idea for this flag book which lists, alphabetically, everyone within my sphere. The few people who are NOT of European descent are printed in a pale brown, everyone else is printed in white on the acetate flags.
2014, Kingston. 21 flags. (9 x 6 x 1/2″ ) Edition of 6. Collections of New York Public Library, Cleveland Institue of Art, University of Puget Sound, University of Rochester, University of Washington, Baylor University.
In her book "Learning to be White: Money, Race and God in America, theologian Thandeka suggests that white people play what she calls The Race Game. It has only one rule: for a week, one must preface any mention of a family member, colleague, friend etc. of European descent with the term "white." From this came the idea for this flag book which lists, alphabetically, everyone within my sphere. The few people who are NOT of European descent are printed in a pale brown, everyone else is printed in white on the acetate flags.
2014, Kingston. 21 flags. (9 x 6 x 1/2″ ) Edition of 6. Collections of New York Public Library, Cleveland Institue of Art, University of Puget Sound, University of Rochester, University of Washington, Baylor University.
This page of The Purple ABC—E is for purple Emperor (Butterfly)—was created using hand-painting on fabric. The page was then quilted. Purples included:
Aubergine, broomrape, a purple cow, damson plum, fireweed, gentian violet, hyacinth, The Purple Island (an allegorical poem about the physiological structure of the human body and the mind of man, written by Phineas Fletcher in 1633,) Jam, Jelly and Juice, loosestrife, Murex Brandaris (shellfish used for royal purple dye,) nightgown, orchid, Peking (a.k.a.the Purple City,) Queen, purple-flowering raspberry, saxifage, thymus vulgaris, ultraviolet light, viola lovelianna, wine, eXtras, yarrow, and zinnia.
1981, Detroit. (Box: 19 x 14 1/2 x 3 1/2″ when closed ) Unique. Whereabouts unknown (if you know where it is, please let me know!)
The strips of handmade paper start out at red and go through the colours of the spectrum and back to red again.
1981, Detroit. (14 x 10 x 2 1/2″ when closed ) Unique. Private Collection.
After making Books #1 and #2 from a rejected hand-made felt triptych, I started designing felt panels specifically to be book pages. I made 5 or 6 felt books in 1979, then 2 in 1980, which were colour xeroxes of felt works.
1979-80, Toronto, ON. 5-8 pages. (approx. 9 x 7 x 1″) Unique. #1: University of Calgary. #2: Never returned from Galerie Caroline Corre, Paris. #4: University of Calgary (fabric and paper.) #6 Private Collection. #7 Private Collection. #8: See #2. #9: Private Collection.
This accordion book was a collaboration with poet H. David Montgomery, with my handmade paper and photocopied images, tipped in. Letter-press printed in gold at Wayne State University.
1981, Detroit. (6 x 4 1/4 x 1″ when closed ) Edition of 18. Toronto Metropolitan Library and Provate Collections.
H. David Montgomery also wrote the poems in this letter-press printed accordion book. Lise made the black handmade paper. The images are colour photocopies of segments of an etching done while at the University of Guelph.
1982, Detroit. (7 x 5x 1 ″ when closed ) Edition of 19. National Library and Archives of Canada and Private Collections.
Poems by Lorna Crozier about the sex lives of vegetables are mingled with seed catalogue descriptions. The text is superimposed on colour-copies of these vegetables. The handmade paper pages are accordion-folded, cut in the shape of vegetables and enclosed in a handmade paper folding case with a garden-twine closure.
1990, Toronto. 17 pages. (10 3/4 x 6 1/2″) Edition of 15. $400
Toronto Reference Library, University of Calgary
This was my first flag book. It was adapted from a book by Lynne Avadenka who had seen one of Hedi Kyle's flag books. I put flags on the back as well as the front. Without a cover, the book is a little like a slinky.
1983, Detroit MI. (5.5 x 5.75 x 1.25″) Edition of 5. Personal collections.
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