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A Torn Web
Poems by Ruth Stone; sixteen etchings by Michele Burgess on handmade Twinrocker paper. Text hand set in Spectrum. Woven-strap vellum binding enclosed in a watercolor painting. Housed in a cloth-covered box. Each box contains one of the original plates from which the etchings were printed. Edition of 40. 2012.
This is a book about the archives of memory—of love, grief, and the ordinary moments of life folded into primordial observations of the natural world. Both poet and artist see art making as an act of positioning oneself in the context of nature’s space, waiting quietly to be overtaken. The book is bound in vellum and enclosed within a folded watercolor painting. There are sixteen poems printed on individual folios of delicate handmade paper and, when each one is opened, a small color etching is found tucked inside. Each box contains one of the plates from which the edition was pulled. This is volume five of Burgess’s series, “The Stratigraphic Archives.”