New Work

Chained Library
2023
Six found books, wood, engraved brass plaques, brass clasps and chains
Height variable x 32” w

From the Middle Ages into the 18th century, books were chained to shelves or pews. This was not only a way of cataloguing and ordering the books (the row’s contents were listed on the end of the shelf or bench), they were also a way of protecting precious books when they were made available to the small but reading general public. Reading is a seedling of revolution, and chained books bring up questions of who has access to information and who controls it. Wars have been waged for millennia in the name of religion to exert and maintain power, and they continue to be fought. The six books in this piece comprise world religions, and are inscribed with the first date or era that it was banned or burned for religious reasons. The chained book is a metaphor for ideas being chained shut, for information access and its counterpart, censorship.

Artists and scientists explore the Arctic Ocean and the Svalbard Archipelago

Arctic Circle Residency
2023

Located just 10 degrees south of the North Pole, this three-week expedition with the Arctic Circle Residency is conducted from a three-masted sailing schooner. Participants engage in pertinent issues through fieldwork, research, and interdisciplinary collaboration.

I am preparing for this incredible opportunity through wide-ranging research, including climate change, the Anthropocene and the arctic, and geo-political factionalism, as well as collecting relevant artists’ books for visual research.

As the residency is in June 2023, when there are 24 hours of sunlight, I am counterbalancing it with a research trip to the Canadian Territories in September 2022 to experience the Northern Lights. From a remote island out of Yellowknife, south of the Arctic Circle and near the magnetic North Pole, the trip is conducted through the Cloud Appreciation Society, of which I am member #40,182.

Artist Residency at Halden Bookworks in Tistedal, Norway

Halden Bookworks Residency
2023

Following the Artist Circle Residency, I will be an artist-in-residence at Halden Bookworks in Tistedal, Norway, sixty miles from Oslo. The center is equipped with letterpress, paper, book, and digital printing studios. This provides me the opportunity to produce mockups and initial projects from the research conducted while in the Arctic. To prepare for this opportunity, I am refreshing my letterpress skills through workshops at the Minnesota Center for Book Arts and a two-week intensive at Penland School of Crafts in North Carolina.