Baltimore Sonnets

The Journey: Today is the final day of blogging about this year-long project of turning textiles into one-of-a-kind mixed media books. I want to show you some of the textiles before I cut, stitched, beaded, combined, collaged, painted, manipulated, and turned them into stories. One thing I learned about this project is: Determination and discipline will take you far.  There was very little information about turning textiles into books, and I experimented with a lot of techniques and processes. The two main goals I had for these books were: 1. Designing the textile pages so that they stood up straight without being too stiff, distorted, and thick.   2.  Designing the wooden covers so that the books could easily be opened, with a 360 degree range.    Both of these goals allowed the books to be exhibited vertically or horizontally. Thank you for following me.  May you have a very happy and productive 2018!

Mixed Media Fiber Art Now that the project is complete and the year is coming to an end.  I would like to show you images of the actual pages. These are a few pages from the 3rd volume, See Us . One of my goals when creating these books was having finished seams (on the edges).  Finished seams make the edges look polished, and, the edges don't fray from touching and turning the pages.

O'Positive: This is the second volume of my series Sun Mirrors.  Created with textiles I received from the National Museum of African Art mixed with contemporary American textiles, it's one of my favorites. The following is an excerpt of the poem I wrote for the book: The Congo is in my blood O'positive, its branches run through me like veins connecting nine mystical bodies.  Gentile and rough I straddle its temperament.  Fire breathing and strong it is the source of breath and death.  If you become brazen, it will knock you into place with its tempestuous side. The Congo is in  my blood from generation to generation I pass it down.    - suzanne coley

I began this mixed media textile project one year ago.  How quickly time goes by. I  created over two hundred textile pages for the twelve volumes. These are a few pages from the first volume of the series: Smog The following is the text I silkscreened on the fabric: She told her dreams to strangers under flickering  candle flames.  No judgment.  No labels. Dreams they all knew would never come true. She wanted a wax that would make her smooth all over. On an opaque day, a man disoriented in the smog of reality stumbled into her. She didn't want to tell him her dreams, but she could no more contain them than the Sun could contain its scorching heat. She told him her desires.  He granted them. For he had already faded into smoke too.       - suzanne coley

Quilting with Printmaking I love to combine quilting techniques with printmaking and book arts.  In the above photo, I used a traditional log cabin quilt block pattern.  I cut 2 inch fabric strips and sewed around a small square at the center of the block.  As you can see, I hand embroidered the center square. I didn't use a pattern for this page.  Instead, I used a lot of my patchwork shapes and sewed them as I went along.  I really enjoyed the spontaneous design process of creating this page.   

Unperson Erased from books.   I am writing them back in.