Transitions Part One

I’ve been working on a pretty ambitious art book off and on for a number of months now.( posted the cover in progress a few posts back.)  It is sort of a fantasy artifact that I’m creating using a lot of bead work and vintage textiles and photos.  It’s pretty intuitive and set in an undeclared past.  It’s also nonspecific.  Above are some views from some of the pages I have made.  It’s a large format and because of this it is time consuming.  I imagine it to be an personal bundle of clues about a woman who comes to Alaska at some nebulous time in the past.  For love?  For adventure?  I realized yesterday that I’m probably assigning my own experience to this fictional document.  I sense ambivalence at the source in what is being assembled.  A sturdy self-reliance.  A yearning for the other path.  A heart swelling for the incomparable beauty of living in a wild land.

I had been looking for a small poem or quote to use in this book, to create with paper handmade beads applied to vintage fabric, and I found it:

Far away there in the sunshine are my highest aspirations. I may not reach them, but I can look up and see their beauty, believe in them, and try to follow where they lead.
--Louisa May Alcott

I’ve recently changed my schedule around to make more time for art/ visual pursuits.  More on how this has come to pass in part two.