My book is art 3

I wrote earlier this week about how Keith Auerbach took pictures of my 15th century book and through the magic of Photoshop transformed them into a series of art prints now on display at Pyro Gallery in Louisville.  Now in a circling back home, I have taken one of his prints and turned it into my own version of art.

Keith had hundreds of postcards for his show that the printer had done wrong and could not be mailed, and he offered them to his friends.  I took a pile and decided to slice them into bits and reconfigure them -- exactly as Keith had done with the photos of my book.  But my reconfiguration was a version of my old favorite "postage stamp" quilt.

For years I've been saving all the announcement postcards I get in the mail for art exhibits, and thinking of sewing them together into a postage stamp array.  This project was a dry run, much smaller than I envision the work of my dreams.

I learned that using paper is in some ways easier than fabric (you don't have to first stitch the little "quilts" together, and you don't end up all covered in bits of thread and fraying fabric) and in some ways trickier (if you run out of thread or make a mistake, you have to carefully fit your needle into the pre-existing holes).  And I learned that the glossy finish of postcards makes the finished product very difficult to photograph, so if I ever make the work of my dreams it may have a hard time getting juried into anything.

But meanwhile, I enjoyed taking the process of cutting, multiplying and reconfiguring one step farther.