Home

2010

Unique Sculptural book with japanese side stitch insert book

Box: Contains original drawings, found objects, hand made boxes, envelopes, etc
Book contains original photos, short story, hand written letters and hand made envelopes - Kristie Atwood

book design Kristie Atwood

Artist Statement:
 

“Home” is a book within a book and sculptural in nature.  It is built around a short story I wrote which is loosely based on an incident involving my great grandmother and her family around 1900.  The work contains all sorts of things that can be pulled out of the story.  

When I began, it was with the vision a  “traditional” book. I illustrated the writing with personal photographs that gave the feeling of the story, mostly of animals that would have been found on the ranch my granny lived on.  Soon though, I felt items breaking through the one dimensional state and into reality, such as the letters that the family write to one another.  

After the book was complete these items kept coming through to create the box.  It is like a child’s collection, or a writer’s collection of things which were found when falling into the cracks of the story and then brought back out.  Items such as bells, rounded stones from the river,  leaves from fall, lost buttons found, worn clothes pins, and hair taken from beloved dogs that sat with the character of Denise when she was most afraid. The writer, as a study, also finds herself as scientific illustrator, by drawing the objects.

I find that I am very close to the people of my past, and I become even closer when I write their stories and make them into a pieces of art.  It becomes completely immersive and my hope that is some how the viewer/reader will get drawn in as well.