‍Since 2009, I have dedicated weeks, months, and years to designing, writing, and producing an annual book documenting my artwork with an accompanying memoir from that year. Each mixed-media volume is bound and presented with different materials that are often repurposed.

The 25-year Handmade Book series came about when, almost overnight, film, the standard way art was documented, became obsolete, replaced by digital hocus pocus. The idea, and the very possibility of work disappearing into the ether of the great World Wide Web, led me to this project in which every single work of art is documented in a form that can be physically held, like a print.

As a career artist for five decades, I sometimes do not recognize my own work in a client’s home or business. Designing and creating annual books gives me a longer memory, a growing skill set, and a greater ability to focus and maintain the very necessary discipline of documenting art that could otherwise be lost.

I began this project by making 100 copies of each volume. Realizing it would overtake my every waking hour, I reduced that number to 50. Upon calculating how many subscribers and complete sets of books existed, a more doable amount of copies became 37; two were added for exhibiting purposes.

Each edition takes a full year to make—original art, concept design, writing, assemblage. I ruminate about the each volume long before I begin to make it. I figure out how to use materials that play a prominent role in each specific year; for example, the boxes for Volume X were made from wood paneling that we had to replace due to flooding. During a big election year, retired political signs became Volume XV’s substrate. This year, Volume XVII is, in part, a collaboration with the Carrboro ArtsCenter’s 3D printing lab.