This lightning bug book's wings open up to reveal a hand-drawn map of the artist's childhood farm, where many lightning bugs were captured, and the following haiku: With eyes uplifted / hands clap, catching all they can; / We all seek the light.

The book is made of paper bag papier mache, embroidered with cotton thread, and painted with acrylic paint and glow in the dark paint.

If a person was a book, what would it tell you? These small books, which take the shape of people's heads, hold stories and poems about the subject inside, and open a variety of ways depending on the person.

For our shared book arts show, Dos-a-Dos II, at the Richard B. Talkin Gallery in 2022, my friend Lenett "Mama Nef" Partlow-Myrick and I co-created a piece as the focal point of the room -- with each of our works displayed on one side of a large accordian structure. Early on in the pandemic, as Nef and I talked about the state of the world together, we became closer as friends, and realized that although our lives were very different, we had significant threads in common beyond our shared love of book art. The pieces shown here represent the panels I created around the themes of our relationships with our mothers, our childhoods, our lineage, and the friendship we share, and Lenett created four panels of her own around the same themes. All eight panels were shown together, with mine on one side and Nef's on the other. Together, they represent a love that transcends our art and the culmination of a wonderful creative process we made for ourselves.

I made the background paper for my panels myself out of glue and torn paper bags, and then used embroidery and collage with Xeroxed family photos, my home town newspaper, and other materials to tell my part of the story.

This book is contained within the rib cage and organs of plastic, thread and paper, with a poem that calls to the purpose of the body's most complicated machines. I started this as a challenge of form -- the body as a sort of gate-style coptic bind -- but found it came together emotionally after my husband underwent heart surgery later in the year. As I watched the echocardiograms, I marveled at the unknown landscape of machines working away for purposes they don't even understand.

This trio of fabric book dolls is based on poems I’ve written about characters in the Günter Grass novel The Tin Drum. They represent three generations: Anna Bronski (the grandmother); Agnes Matzerath (the mother); and Oskar (the son, and the book's protagonist).

I've tried to make the physical experience of reading each poem doll mirror an aspect of the doll's character, and also somewhat intrusive -- as each poem touches on private, uncomfortable moments of their lives. You must lift a skirt, or unzip a dress, or unbutton suspenders to read their stories.

You can hear each poem and see the dolls in action by viewing the attached video.

More at http://kineticprose.com/2012/12/06/tin-drum-update-the-trio-is-complete/

This "living fossil" book sculpture is made mainly from paper bags, eyelets and glue. A poem is hidden within the horseshoe crab's book gills -- one stanza per segment. The legs, tail and gills move, as do the front and middle sections of "carapace." You can read more about the project here: http://kineticprose.com/2013/04/22/living-fossil-book/.

This work explores the legacy of lost birdsong through book art forms. Each of the six books represents a commonly lost Baltimore bird. When the book is closed, the bird appears to be dead and devoid of color; when its pages are opened, the bird comes alive through colorful paper popups and poetry that reveal secrets of the voices lost to the lights.

These were shown as part of Lynne Parks' group show Unfriendly Skies: Birds, Buildings, and Collisions exhibits at Goucher College and George Mason University in 2015.

This is a selection of book projects from the last few years, including a number that appeared in the book arts show my friend Lenett Parlow-Myrick put on at the Hamilton Gallery in 2018.

Some of my poems wind up inside books; others do not. This is a selection of several I've written recently for purposes other than my own book binding.

I have made many, many books of poems, paper, fabric and other materials. These are a few of my favorites.