I’m very pleased to have participated in the Art of the Book 18, an international juried exhibition of book arts which travelled across Canada for two years! My artist’s book features an excerpt from Thoreau’s essay, Walking.
The exhibition was at the McGill University Library, Rare Books and Special Collections from Nov. 2019 to Feb. 2020. We held an event there in February, featuring a guided visit to the exhibition, a presentation of historical manuscripts from the Colgate Collection and ending with a discussion of my book, A View from the Treetops.
I explained my creative approach: Thoreau considered walking as a journey, where one explores, finding a link with nature in all its beauty, even when it is chaotic or disorganized. Taking this experience as a working method, I explored my connection with this subject, directly exploring paper, ink and water. The text is written in sumi, in a personalized Gothicized Italic style. The visual aspect of the book is also done with ink using real pine branches to recall the experience of climbing a tree.
A nice coincidence… the second venue on the cross-Canada tour was the university library where my mother had worked as librarian so very many years ago!
