My blog is fulfilling its goal, I’m meeting and talking, or should I say emailing artists more than ever.

I love to communicate with other artists I enjoy the interaction—the main reason for my blog. What a great day when emails are filled with wonderful images and accompanied information. It’s like Christmas!

Lots of work goes into blogging, and it takes time away from my most important priority creating artists’ books and taking photographs. Posts demand planning and communicating in an efficient manner. I am very grateful for those of you who responded on such short time frames.

Talking about lots of work, let's congratulate Helen Hiebert on her 100th blog post last Sunday!

My blog is receiving more and more subscribers thank you for the support. I’m giving away a volume of the original 7 volumes of my series City Shields to the first brave subscriber to my posts and to every 15th subscriber on the list. I appreciate the compliments on my book box Finding Home. We are never alone in our experiences, I’m pleased my book conveyed a sense of place.

With the sun out and the forsythias loosing their blooms we know it is SPRING! So with camera in hand I photographed the first flowers that made me smile!

Back to business and the explosion box/book box. I like the last term! Susan Bonthron created a double explosion box (box within a box) based on the Chinese sewing box. Wonderful!

Another book box creation of Susan’s is entitled Almost There and was part of the Philadelphia Atheneum exhibition From Seneca Falls to Philadelphia: Women of the Centennial.

Susan emailed the colophon printed on the inside of the lid of Almost There. A great insight into the work:

« The story of how the idea came to me is interesting. I looked at the call for entries for the Atheneum show, and thought, "No, I'm not going to enter that; it's political and not up my alley." But one night I saw the book in a dream--the scroll encased in a "jail" box, with windows made of upside-down American flags, the women visible on the outside of the scroll appearing to be "captured" in jail (Susan B. Anthony was jailed for attempting to vote), and the inside of the scroll printed with the Declaration of the Rights of the women of the United States (presented by the National Woman Suffrage Association on July 4th, 1876 at the Philadelphia Centennial). The call for entries required a design for a book to be made specifically for the show. I drew my dream book and sent it in, and it was accepted. Then I had to figure out how to make the book! Fortunately my husband, Gilbert Ruff, is a cabinet maker, and he constructed the wooden scroll and its plinth. I made my first "exploding box with windows" for the case, printing the American flags on acetate and gluing them between the double frames of the windows. Quite a job! I created the scroll itself by researching the suffragists and finding images of them from which I drew and created silhouettes. Not all the important women fit onto the scroll, so I also included a list of the ones whom I could not create images for. On the back of the scroll I printed a reduced copy of the entire Declaration of the Rights for Women »—Susan Bonthron

Book Artist Kerry McAleer-Keeler also creates book boxes. I enjoyed viewing Boxed Spirits: Franny, Zooey, and Everyman a box structure inspired from the J.D. Salinger novel Franny and Zooey and the allegorical tale of the Everyman.

Inside the box structure one finds photographic transfers amongst a monotype printed background. The transfers represent the two main characters as children to their adulthood. Kerry used period family photographs as source material for the images. The main box also houses 3 smaller cubes that are containers for horse hair spheres that reflect the spirits of Franny, Zooey, and all of us. The piece exemplifies the spiritual search for Franny in the novel and for all of us in real life.

© 1999 Kerry McAleer-Keeler, Boxed Spirits: Franny, Zooey, and Everyman, part of the rare book collection at the Gelman Library, George Washington University in Washington DC — © 1999 Kerry McAleer-Keeler, Boxed Spirits: Franny, Zooey, and Everyman, part of the rare book collection at the Gelman Library, George Washington University in Washington DC

How do you express yourself and your ideas?

Bah! Grumble! Grumble! Got to take care of a printer misfeed. I’m printing business cards, another hat I’m wearing today, so have fun creating.

Being alone.

Finding Home.

I moved many times since 2004, my last move was last July to Boise, Idaho. I love our little house, It's cozy and simple, so simple we have no sofa. Why not you ask? Because someone miscalculated the moving truck's cubic feet!

I’m always reluctant to move and our new place still doesn’t feel like home. Though I have a sense of belonging in my half measure studio.

I can no longer ignore the challenges of this move. I compare the aspects of my life to the years before Idaho. Heck! let's face it before 30 years ago.

I dread the future and transitions are difficult. Right now as we say in Canada, “slow as molasses in January” but it’s March!

I have not found myself or the essence of our home/city, I’m uncomfortable. With time and age, my way of life is different. What I want is different and how I want to express myself is different.

What’s next? Who knows! It’s getting to the other side that’s bumpy! Driving over a cliff, bumpy! How do you cope with change?

“Masquerading as a normal person day after day is exhausting”—my motto for this month. While my husband goes by “Sometimes you just have to leap, and build your wings on the way down.”—Kobi Yamada

Michael has always built his wings as he travels. I hate that!!

Before the molasses came, I took my creativity and published an artists’ book that speaks of being alone, missing my country and missing my culture. I present to you Finding Home.

After taking a writing workshop with Paulann Petersen last summer, I wrote the poem for Finding Home.

At home, the sun kisses the foothills

and transforms

the horizon with vivid colours.

Finding home...

Where do I belong?

Longing to be back home,

where the maple leaf

soars above the hills

and

la langue Française

de la belle province

is recognized,

Dreaming of home,

I wake to the sounds

of coyotes

and

live where the light shines till late

—the days are long,

the country wild and free,

A sense of place,

a sense of belonging,

je me souviens

de la fleur de lys,

my roots are deep,

back and forth

as a butterfly flitting

across the miles.

Finding home...

I have made two explosion boxes with the help of Susan Bonthron. I discovered Susan’s Adam’s Error, Only One Bite the day I was exploring 23 Sandy Gallery’s website. Soon after I emailed Susan to guide me to a tutorial. To my amazement, Susan emailed me her instructions. I made an 8 inches square box for my first explosion box. Never start big!!

Susan’s artist book Adam’s Error, Only One Bite is about the myth of Adam in Eden, the intersection of belief and reason, and the mathematical discoveries that represent the ‘bites’ each scientist or mathematician tastes of the whole mythical fruit that represents what can be known of our universe. Susan’s choice of mathematicians was inspired by Michael Guillen’s book, Five Equations that Changed the World: the Power and Poetry of Mathematics (New York: Hyperion, 1995).

© 2012 Susan Bonthron, Adam’s Error, Only One Bite — © 2012 Susan Bonthron, Adam’s Error, Only One Bite

Susan works under the imprint Otter Pond Bindery.

Does your art decode the passage of time?