JRP|Ringier, printed in Europe, 2017


Private Collection, US

Telescoping box. Lid is designed after photographs taken by the binder. Frame is assembled with layers of handmade papers in stone grey, bright white, cream, slate grey, black and mottled blue-black with an inlay of metallic cork paper. Details added with cotton floss through embroidery and hand drawn elements using colored pencils. Lid is lined with decorative purple ivy paper.

Book is housed in a tray lined with matching purple ivy paper. A piece of yellow chartreuse wool string aids in lifting the book out of the tray. The book tray sits inside a frame covered in raspberry bookcloth that sits on a base covered in stone grey paper

25.2cm x 18.8cm x 5.1cm - Completed in 2021

• Exhibited in Stichting Handboeken - International Bookbinding Competition: Box Your Book
  
OBA Oosterdok (Amsterdam Public Library), Amsterdam, The Netherlands
Museum Jan Boon, De Rijp, The Netherlands
Bookbinding Center Echten, Echten, The Netherlands
BplusC Library Leiden, Leiden, The Netherlands
Cultural Center Scharpoord, Knokke-Heist, Belgium

I have a special fondness for the work of Sheila Hicks, which is partly due to our connection as native Nebraskans living elsewhere, but mostly for a shared affinity for texture, color and architecture.

Sheila Hicks moved to Paris in 1964 and made the city her permanent home. In 2016, I visited Paris at the tail end of a city-wide installation of Hicks’ work. A purely delightful coincidence. I embarked on a scavenger hunt to find and document all five of these installations, which created a richer experience of the city as I found myself in unassuming, quiet spaces. One of these five sites included Librairie Petite Egypte where I picked up a copy of Sheila Hicks Apprentissages, which is a short publication about these five installations plus a larger body of work that interacted with the gardens and architecture of the Musée Carnvalet.

For the box I chose to recreate my own photograph documenting Apprentissages (Saint-Paul), which encapsulates both the richness of the work and how it expands our focus to the texture and radiancy of the surrounding architecture no matter how mundane.