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ARTIST'S BOOK, 2014, Used/Salvage Papers, Cheesecloth, Various Paints, Inks and Pencils, Felt, Leather, Lead, Wood and Found Materials, 24”w x 12”h x 12”d
In early 2014 Siolo Thompson curated an exhibition called “One Hundred Artists, One Hundred Books”. It was timed to coincide with The Seattle Book Fair. 100 artists were invited to create a work of art that referred to a book that was significant to them. Each artist selected one book and, once selected, it could not be chosen by any other of the artists. I chose SUITE FRANCAISE by Irene Demirovski, a French-Hungarian Jew who had converted to Catholicism as a child but who nevertheless perished in the Holocaust in 1942. Before she died at Auschwitz she wrote this suite of novellas about the great migration of French people, mostly Jewish, trying to get out of France ahead of the Nazi occupation and the ordeals they faced on the road. The books were not discovered (by her niece) until the 1980s and were published long after Demirovski’s death. My “Artist’s Book” has 45 pages, and is in French so a translation sheet was provided at the show.