Baltimore Sonnets

Beading   Beading is a nice way to add texture and a little glitter to fabric.  Here is a view of the backside of one of the beaded designs in my handmade textile book Goats.

  100,000 Forbidden and Banned Books Banned books donated from all over the world were used to create the Parthenon of Books in Kassel, Germany. The installation was constructed at the same site (Friedrichsplatz Park) where Nazi sympathizers burned books on May 19, 1933 during the "Campaign against the Un-German Spirit. " The brainchild of this installation, Argentinian artist Marta Minujin, established a list of banned books for her project with the assistance of students at Kassel University. With donations from the public, 100,000 copies of the banned books were gathered to create the  structure.  Parthenon of Books has the same dimensions of the real-life Parthenon in Athens. *** Note: This is a temporary installation and will will run until September 17, 2017.  When it ends, the Parthenon of Books will be dismantled and the books will be distributed around the world.

Textile Books Today I visited the National Museum of African Art to meet my mentor and show her fifteen new textile pages.  I've been interested in how we read textile pages before they are bound and after they are bound. One of the things I've noticed is how people tend to hold the unfinished pages much longer when the pages are unbound.  They seem less afraid to "handle" the pages and seem to enjoy looking at the back stitching and artwork.  (Once the pages are bound, the backsides are no longer visible.)