I wish you could come visit and smell this book!

Bloom.

This box contains fragments of the year flowers kept me more company than people & memories lingered like scents. I became my own bloom, invariably unsure if I was taking root or withering.

The @areyoubookenough artists' book challenge March theme 'fenced' felt like a tough one at first, but soon it became clear I’d build a small garden only the scent of flowers gets to escape. My artists' books are often quite personal and act as documents of what's been on my mind at the time. Fences made me think of the invisible barriers that suddenly emerged a year ago. Lockdowns and restrictions have kept us from other people and other places. We keep sheltering in place more or less religiously, but as time goes by, home feels less like shelter and more like a prison (mine’s still a very cozy one, thankfully). I don’t really meet people and I've spent more money on cut flowers than ever before in my life (and I plan to continue). Something about the decaying flowers brings me comfort: I wait to see how the flowers stop being flowers and are just deconstructed bits of plant material. The flowers are dying, I am alive - even if it doesn’t always feel like a life whatever it is that I’m living.

The magic box construction is based on the Jacob’s ladder structure (I’ve used this before in my Fingerprints artists’ book) and it in turn hides and reveals. Inside the glass box there’s rose petals, tulips, and lavender. The other side carries rose and lavender under mull cloth that allows their scents to become a part of the experience of handling this piece. Scents can trigger vivid memories, and I love it when I can create a book with a potential surprise element.

You can view a video of the book in action right here.

This year I’ve spent weeks and weeks waiting for one thing or another. This week my main wait came to an end: My third poetry book, Salit, is finally here! Printing books in the middle of a pandemia is not easy, it seems, but thankfully it got done and I love the end result. The book is in Finnish (want to translate and publish it? - do get in touch!) and you can purchase it directly from me or my publisher Poesia.

Now I’m trying to persuade myself into taking deep breaths and just relaxing for a little while, but there’s already a new book anxious to be born. I’m hoping to dedicate even more time to artists’ books and poetry this year, so I’m definitely clinging to any and all fragments of inspiration.