Artist’s book
16″ x 3.5″ x 3.5″
2017

I am preoccupied with climate impacts on forests. Hiking through forests burned and yet to burn, I observe hieroglyphic “scribing” of bark beetles on bark and sapwood. The winding marks seem like a script I can’t read, as if their trails (called “galleries”) are undecipherable cryptograms. A book, after all, is a collection of messages; incorporating natural materials becomes a meditation on those materials’ disturbing beauty, as well as an opportunity to learn. Beetle-kill is compounded by climate change: trees stressed by heat and drought are vulnerable; the beetles’ larvae no longer freeze in warmer winters. Reproduction rates soar, tipping populations from endemic to epidemic. Only a few species mass attack live trees. Even they are a normal disturbance agent like fire — but they enthusiastically respond to the conditions we created: a warming world, a century of fire suppression, and vast menu of even-aged agri-timber over which we and the beetles now compete.

– Suze Woolf, Seattle, WA

Letterpress from cast metal type
12.25″ x 12″ x 9″
2021

The Linotype Daily is a year-long print project, in which a new print is created, cast in hot metal from the original type matrices, proofed, printed in a letterpress edition, and released to the internet everyday. The introduction of the Linotype machine in 1886, the first machine to successfully automate the hand typesetting process, began a new printing revolution, allowing books and newspapers to be made faster, more affordable and accessible to a much wider audience and truly ushered in the information age we now live in. The Linotype Daily project attempts to use this once speedy, but now painfully slow and meticulous process, to sift through the day’s news and events and present to the public a daily record of the lives we are leading. Beginning March 1st, 2019, it chronicles this tumultuous period of time, while reflecting on our current oversaturated information moment using the very machine which got it started. The project continues as The Linotype Occasionally, releasing a new Linotype cast letterpress print 3 to 5 times per month.

– Dan Wood, Providence, RI

Mixed media
8″ x 18″ x 2″
2021

From the time I was a child I have collected objects of sentimental value to me. I found myself with multiple shoe boxes full of personal relics with memories or symbolic meaning attached to them. Through this collection of physical objects, I am able to revisit memories at will. Although it is impossible to precisely recreate a memory, using devices such as contextual prompts and objects, I am able to reflect on the past experience with vivid detail through imagination. With having these physical objects from times in my life, I am able to revisit those memories. Elbow to Elbow relates directly to this idea. The beautifully colored sea shells were once in the shoe box with many other objects that were important to me, but are now housed in a wood crafted reliquary where the memory is displayed for all to see. Each of the objects as well as the books represent a member of my family, and the memories that are connected to them. Through this idea I am able to revisit that memory

– Allie Wheeler, Manti, UT

Papers, pigments, book board & cloth, ribbon, threads, pva
12.75″ x 28.25″ x 28.25″
2018

A sculptural celebration of Emily Bronte’s wonderful land, sea, and star-scapes. The smaller poem, “And first an hour…,” corresponds quite closely with the stanzas of Stars. Both poems follow a similar visual and philosophical thread, but while Stars faithfully yearns for the night sky, “And first an hour…” ends in honoring our the sun. There was a logical progression of light in the verse. The poem begins with a glaring sunrise, then retreats to the memory of a preferred starry night. Next the sun begins to rise again, ascending enough to light the hills, before retreating once more to stars. Finally ending in a bright bedroom, and a sunrise that won’t be denied. These seven changes of light and scenes are reflected in the seven pointed star of the book and poem circle. Stars are stitched in the skyline and outer box edges, enveloping the imagery in stars. The number of stars in the different sections corresponds with how strongly the sun is fighting for space in each scene.

– Joelle Webber, WESTPORT ISLAND, ME

Eco print with eucalyptus leaves, wax/oil monotypes with ink
20 centimeter x 9 centimeter x 2 centimeter
2022

In the forest, transformation is happening all the time. Leaf fall and tree rings give us a visual record of time passing. This collaborative book by Marama Warren and Sharon Armstead aims to honour the process of transformation in nature by considering a forest over time. Text reads:
‘Inky grasses brush dark hills
where scattered trees hold memories,
count centuries,
imprint history
in their annual rings.
Roots of wood and stone
bind deep
the silent scriptures,
ancient stories,
climate records
safe within.

– Marama Warren and Sharon Armstead, MILTON , New South Wales

Eco-dyed and eco-printed rag and handmade papers.
19 centimeter x 7 centimeter x 7 centimeter
2020

This collaborative book evolved over a period of many months. The artists began by eco-dyeing papers, making eco-prints using leaves and bark of Eucalyptus cinerea and tested results using various mordants. Then they experimented with different book structures and settled on the pod shape as the ideal vessel to carry their message of transformation. Text reads: ‘Seed, shoot, leaf, flower, fruit Pods are the vessels that contain the seeds of transformation.

– Marama Warren and Sharon Armstead, Milton, New South Wales

Book arts, lettterpress printed
9.5″ x 6.5″ x .5″
2021

Questionnaire for Two Pussies is the second of five books examining South Florida’s cultural landscape and issues. Q42P is funded by an Oolite Arts Ellies Creator Award. This book comes from collaborating poets Maureen Seaton and Denise Duhamel’s long term conversations around feminism and their shared experiences. Virgin worked with painter Mary Malm to create a visual story paralleling the conversation in the poetry, to support this compelling feminist treatise. Tom Virgin printed all the images in conversation with Malm and the poets, bound and covered the book in a laser cut maple veneer wrapper.

– Thomas Virgin, Miami, FL

Polychromed papercut stencils, registered and offset
12″ x 72″ x 1″
2021

Stars Rise and Fall. Night Follows Day. All Creatures Stand Witness, While Mother Nature Holds Her Breath Mother Nature Holds Her Breath, an accordion book measuring 7’ when fully extended, displays diametrically opposed environmental visions. By offset printing and registering polychromed paper stencils to create a unique recto-verso bookwork, lush flora and fauna on one side is on full display. Ominously, that fecundity is overwhelmed on the opposing side by the environmental wasteland that industrialization with its exploitation of the environment has created. From spewing smokestacks to clear-cut forests the devastating impact on the environment is the focus this work addresses. And yet, Mother Earth, while waiting to see when we will act to heal her wounds, continues to provide us with her bounty.

– Mj Viano Crowe, Belfast, ME

Artist’s Book
8.75″ x 4.75″ x 1″
2020

This book references creativity and the spirit of play in our communities. The text is inspired by a day that my nieces filled a dry erase markerboard with their description of the joyful sounds of the process. I titled it Picnicking since my grandfather knew that my sisters and I were strong spellers and would ask us to spell all of the trickiest words he could think of every time we saw him. He would always be so proud when we spelled them correctly, even though he asked us so often that we had memorized his list.

– Naomi Velasquez, Pocatello, ID

Paper, book board, ink, PVA, magnets
6″ x 6.5″ x 5.75″
2021

I am privileged to live in White skin. The three outer walls of the pyramid box show three ways of imagining a White person: a blank canvas with no words, “pretty, pretty white” and “White Privilege, White Complicity, White Supremacy.” Inside, a variety of hues, imprinted with hand-made stamps, indicate the complexity of culture and ethnicity no one can see on the surface. An equilateral accordion-folded triangle book sits inside the box. The book, Eye Was Taught To Be White, provides three race-based vignettes. Two tales illuminate how I was raised to be White while a third shows the ongoing struggle for cultural humility to call out racism when I encounter it. Near the bottom of this box, the white paper adhered where it should not have, leaving a tattered edge along two of the sides. Rather than remake and hide these faults, they have been left just out of view, in a tiny attempt to show the problems White privilege presents.

– Denise Stephenson, Oceanside, CA

Artist’s book with pressure prints, screen print
4″ x 4″ x 2″
2018

In an effort for understanding and to determine their course in the world, humans have always used images and rituals to help divine truth. As an artist and visual storyteller, I explore universal themes of memory, loss, time, chance, and change, and my work is a processing and reinterpreting of experiences and observations of both the natural and emotional world using a personal visual iconography that reflects and suggests rather than illustrates.

– Stephanie Smith, Decatur, GA

Winner of the Dot Moye Memorial Prize
Flag book
8.875″ x 6.75″ x 1.625″
2021

The flag book, florescence, is an artistic representation of living with chronic illness and finding solace in nature. Florescence is defined as the process of blooming. This book represents my symbolic prayers through nature, hoping that I am also undergoing a transformation of healing and blooming like my flowers. Details include hand-cut floral silhouettes, pressed forget-me-nots, and endsheets made of handmade paper with zinnia and snapdragon seeds as inclusions. On the spine side, my poem reads: Some days, the only thing I can manage is to sit in the garden. I take care of my flowers, wishing for them to grow and flourish, hoping as a silent prayer that the universe will take care of me. That same hummingbird often visits — it’s as if the universe speaks. Hush, my child. Let your mind rest. The book is housed in a handmade box which includes a tray to lift the book out, as well as interlocking wooden stands to display the book in its intended floral shape. Displayed in this way, the sculptural quality makes readers shift perspective to view the entire poem. Light is sifted through the silhouettes inside creating a garden of shadows.

– Maddi Bryce Smith, Woodstock, GA