in dreams
In Dreams is a collection of three tiny books detailing some of my thoughts and feelings about the nature of dreaming. All three books are made with a variety of materials and processes, and each book utilizes its own bookbinding technique.
IN DREAMS i am an animal stuck in a tree
Dreaming can feel like being lost in a maze or caught in a trap. To explore this sensation, I created a book with a fold-out map format, something difficult to open and close, a visual jumble of colors and patterns until laid out just the right way. The unfolded book is double-sided, but both sides convey the same message with more or less the same visual elements, a reflection of the way our minds take our daily thoughts and experiences and recycle them over and over to create fantasies and nightmares out of what we thought was familiar.
ARMCHAIRS
My favorite song about dreaming comes from artist Andrew Bird's 2007 album, Armchair Apocrypha. The song is called Armchairs. The song elegantly frames what it is like to dream of someone you love, or someone you used to love, which I think is a really familiar concept to most people who remember their dreams.
I dreamed you were a cosmonaut
Of the space between our chairs
And I was a cartographer
Of the tangles in your hair
For this book, I continued with the theme of repetitive and cloudy imagery, and used French Fold binding with a paper wrapper, which hides the exterior thread to give the outside an illusion of seamlessness. With pages made of near-translucent craft paper, this book feels almost weightless, which I find speaks to the fleeting nature of dreaming, especially dreaming of other people.
September
September interprets the way our dreams often form from a single thought and then spiral outwards into an infinite number of possibilities. This book is an accordion fold with a non-adhesive cover and removable spine, thus making it readable either page by page or as one continuous strip of paper.
