Categories
Art Book Design

Chop it Like it’s Hot

Chop it Like it's Hot

Chop it Like it’s Hot is a textile book comprised of abstract images… or are they real? Follow the GPS coordinates on each page to see how humans have interfered with the coastal landscape along Galveston Island.

Chop it Like it’s Hot, 2023
8×8″ pages
Found textiles, machine and hand stitching

Categories
Art Book Design

To the Sea

To the Sea

To the Sea is a personal project where I challenged my (and others) preconceived notions on what a book “is” and what kind of forms it can take. In this experiment I used all the same components of a traditional book: words on pages, cut, assembled, and sewn together to form an object. However, this book hangs from the wall as a kind of instillaion.  The book was constructed during the 2020 Covid quarantine when I was desperate for a carefree day at the beach.

To the Sea, 2020
Dimensions variable
Found branch, vintage paper, thread, hand stitching

Categories
Book Design

Views Removed

Client: Dana Fritz

[2019] Internationally known and published photographer, Dana Fritz, reached out to me to assist her in the design of the limited edition book design for her series, Views Removed. Dana and I collaborated on the design, layout, typography, color, and book cover. She came to me with the great idea for scroll and accordion books already in mind.
Photos ©Dana Fritz

Categories
Art Book Design

Confessions of a Bird Stalker

Confessions of a Bird Stalker

[2019] Confessions of a Bird Stalker is an artist’s book reinterpretation of the poem, Ode to Bird Watching, by Pablo Neruda.

I came across this poem in my research on bird migration and saw the opportunity to create a new narrative using in form of the concertina book while experimenting with typography and letterpress. The entire book is hand-sewn and hand-set, mostly utilizing the blind emboss technique on a proofing press. The book is 30 feet long, 6 inches tall, and housed in a handmade slipcase.

The book exploits the psychology of watcher versus stalker. [read more]

There are two ways to read this book.

The first, reading the book straight through – both the blind embossed and inked words – as you would Pablo Neruda’s Ode to Birdwatching poem.

The second option, reading only the inked words, has a more sinister tone, similar to how a stalker would think or feel about their prey. [As I began to dive deeper into ornithology, I also found myself becoming a birdwatcher, and that is where I started to notice that the habits of a bird watcher and stalker are largely the same.] This viewing is meant to be a tactical and immersive experience. The red thread acts as a barrier between a stalker and their prey, becoming more haphazard and unraveling as the stalker gets more frustrated with the birds. The thread also acts as a visual cue to the next lines of type. 

At the end of the book, sewn into the last fold, is Pablo Neruda’s original poem in both English and Spanish. This provides a reference for the viewer to see the original format, as well as an accessibility feature, as blind embossed words can be difficult to read for some viewers.

Letterpress on Stonehenge white; inkjet on French Paper butcher extra white, with waxed cotton thread. Scrabble (wood type), Gothic (metal type), & Benton (digital) typefaces.

I am very grateful to Pablo Neruda for writing a beautiful poem for me to mull over and reinterpret. Learn more about Neruda here.

Neruda, Pablo. All the Odes. Translated by Ilan Stevens. Farrar, Straus and Giroux,  Bilingual edition, 2017.

Ode to Birdwatching in its original form:
Categories
Book Design Graphic Design Photography

Auspex

Auspex

Auspex is a visual research project based on the ecosystems of Hall County, NE. The sandhill crane migration served as the impetus for this project. Working as a part ornithologist, photographer, and designer, I researched the early naturalists of Nebraska and acquired writings and photographs from the University of Nebraska’s Archives + Special Collections Library, Frank Shoemaker and Erwin H. Barbour being the most prolific; reading academic journals and books about the ecological systems and how they are most threatened by agriculture and water shortages; and two research trips to Grand Island, where I collected sound, video, and photographs of the sandhill cranes. Additionally, the symbology found throughout the book was sourced from Shoemaker’s field journals – the shorthand notes for bird calls.