ARTIST'S BOOKS by ALICE BRODY

ARTIST'S BOOKS BY ALICE BRODY

Alice Brody is a fabric artist. She creates asemic books from scrap fabric remnants, to great effect! She also makes tiny books in other mediums, e.g. paintings.

Book List 

(Scroll below for details)

BLUE, BLEU, BLU (hand-made quilt fabric remnants, New York, 2013). Size: 2" x 2.5"

EMILY DICKINSON (watercolor paper, card stock, acrylics, gloss and matte medium, New York, 2019). Size: 2.5" x 3"

JAPAN TALES (hand-made quilt fabric remnants, New York, 2013). Size: 2.75" x 3"

JAUNE AMARILLO YELLOW (hand-made quilt fabric remnants, New York, 2013). Size: 3" x 2.75"

from KINTSUKUROI by Eileen R. Tabios (watercolor paper, card stock, acrylics, gloss and matte medium, New York, 2019). Size 2.5" x 3.5"

NIGHT FALLS (watercolor paper, card stock, acrylics, gloss and matte medium, New York, 2019). Size 2.5" x 3"

ROUGE ROJO RED (hand-made quilt fabric remnants, New York, 2013). Size: 3" x 3"

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Book Details 

(Featured in alphabetical order)

BLUE, BLEU, BLU

There are so many lovely elements to this enchanting 2" x 2.25" book.  First, there's just the craftsmanship of it, which includes a blue board backing to the covers and side-ties:

As you page through the book, you'll see the many ways Alice explores the blue theme.  What's great is how her explorations are not just variations of the color but "riffs" off of the theme.  Thus, some of the pages are not just cut-outs from applicable fabrics but fabrics with glued-on designs.  Let's page through the book:

As you see, Alice is not letting the color be a constraint.  She's allowing herself to freely roam offa da blue pasture.  In a way, it reminds me of a book I once reviewed, RED by Marilyn R. Rosenberg, that explored red-ness.  By not sticking to their respective colors, Alice actually heightens blue-ness as Marilyn does red-ness.  The effect is lush and resonant.  Here are more pages from Alice's book:

The immediately preceding image above shows the center pages.  This could mean that the rest of the pages are just doubles, except that subsequent pages get more treatment by Alice (addition of extra material) so that they are not repetitious:

I also adore Alice's "diction" as regards the different types of fabrics and materials so as to imbue the pages with extra dimensions viz surface and tactility, as with the furry thread on the following:

All in all, the mini-book provides for a delightful experience.  One can return to it more than once and receive a variety of joyful engagements.  Here's what it looks like as a closed volume:

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EMILY DICKINSON

I love Alice's Tiny Book treatment of these lines by Emily Dickinson:

A lane of Yellow led the eye

Unto a Purple Wood

Whose soft inhabitants to be

Surpasses solitude

If Bird the silence contradict

Or flower presume to show

In that low summer of the West

Impossible to know

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JAPAN TALES

Here is Alice's JAPAN TALES as it unfolds, starting with its cover:

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JAUNE AMARILLO YELLOW

I love Alice Brody's multiple explorations of the color YELLOW!

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from KINTSUKUROI by Eileen R. Tabios


An ekphrastic Tiny Book! I'm blessed that Alice thought to make a Tiny Book based on one of my poems--an excerpt is featured within:

What also is interesting is that when Alice gave me the book, it came with a card featuring a Tiffany vase in the Metropolitan Museum of Art (NY)'s collection -- look at the colors!

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NIGHT FALLS

Night falls beautifully when depicted by Alice:

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ROUGE ROJO RED

Alice's explorations of RED is also multi-faceted and pleasing:

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Eileen is delighted to shelve Alice Brody's books in her Tiny Library!