I’ve just finished my latest artists’ book, Cosmology. This project began twenty years ago, when I took a trip to Japan and was inspired by the way light filtered through traditional shoji screens in the Ryokan (Japanese Inn) where I stayed.

Cosmology features a laser cut shoji window, and I used this one-sheet book structure to create a space in the middle of the book.
Here is an early model of the book.

During the papermaking process, I created the imagery using a watermarking technique. I adhered a thin adhesive-backed rubber to the mould and pulled a very thin sheet, so that the pulp slipped off of the rubber, leaving only a thin whispery vail.

Next, I couched the blue image onto an off-white base sheet.

Diane Jacobs letterpress printed the text. The poem, by Carl Adamshick (pictured below) reads:
Cosmology
Silence is a window
open to the mountain air.
The window, a map,
moonlit, showing
an ocean floor
and the lost city
where your child grew tall.
Memory is the water
you hear falling
on the mountain
as you push
the silence closed.

The windows were laser cut by Joe Freedman.

And the book is housed in a handmade paper slip cover.

This is an edition of 50.