my books. they are a cradle for me. walls of them. towers of them. curving around my life. smiling at me. soothing me and motivating me. like a multi-dimensional ghost mother, holding my hand forever. my bookshelves hold almost everything i love. jewelry and cameras and shells and photos and all the little stories that only i recognize. all tucked in with the books.

for years i painted. i thought it was what i would always do. i was driven to paint. but gradually my painting was replaced.
a few years ago i worked in an art supply store. i had been sure that this was the ideal part time job for me. a truly perfect place for me to while away time, fantasizing about the brilliant potential of the materials at my disposal, organized on shelves for me to choose from. going home with bags of paint and wonderful papers and canvases. but i found the days endlessly long. there was a lifeless and wretched quality to those days. i couldn't understand it. how was it possible that i could be bored. period. i am never bored. ever. and here i was wandering between the shelves going mad with boredom. and i started to analyze it. the art materials were quite pathetic, actually. stiff and empty and meaningless, waiting sadly. static. dead. there was no vitality. they were quite ridiculously depressing until they were used. until they become the art they are dead materials.
and i think the contrast is a sharp one when compared to the bookstore where i also work. being in the presence of books all day is powerful. the ideas and knowledge and power of story leap among the shelves with an energy and speed and sparkle that is impossible to muffle. there is no waiting. the work is complete and present and real and true.
i make art from books. the pages steeped in age and thought and image and brilliant skipping energy motivate me and find me and engage me while i find my own new language in them. for 20 years or more i had used old printed pages in my work, attaching them to paintings, incorporating them with ease. but without knowing when or why, the pages took over entirely. i may have grown disenchanted spending too much time with the dead, soul-less materials, but i believe i was heading on this journey regardless.

last night we fell asleep to the sound of the rain hitting the roof outside our window. it's been a gray couple of days. the rain and chill of autumn has crept up on us. we have finally turned on the furnace.....the chill is a little more than the fireplace will erase in the evenings. i remember as a child my little grandmother making me strings of little attached paper dolls to play with on a dull and rainy day. i still love making these little charmers from fabulous old papers and using them in my collage or journal making.

and today looks like it will be another one of those days that begs for a cup of tea, a quilt and an engaging book. my wonderful friend, mark sinnett, won the toronto book award last night for his fabulous novel, the carnivore. if you're looking for an amazing book for this rainy weekend, this is my pick. i'm planning to re-read it this weekend.

i'm spending this week cleaning out drawers, reorganizing closets, throwing away things that we've been keeping out of habit for a decade. all the things that are keeping our house from functioning smoothly. i draw no inspiration from tv shows that make heros out of nazi organizers, or that take rooms and strip them into vacuous lifeless boxes full of color coordinated department store crap. i draw inspiration from my own home. i love my home. i just need to get rid of the stuff i don't use, need or love. my wall of books in the dining room is perfection for me. if i ever try to over-organize this, something has gone terribly wrong in my brain. this is the top half of my wall of books. the bottom section is 2 feet deep to hold all my large art books. books are the foundation of my life and our house is built around finding homes for them. one of my favorite book features is the built in bookshelf on one wall of our staircase. when we were restoring our 150 year old limestone house, i felt such excitement when i saw the inside of the walls, the lathe and plaster, the beams....i didn't want it all covered up again forever. so, on the staircase, we removed the top layer of plaster, exposing the joists and lathe & plaster of the other wall. in the several inches between we created shelves. i love glancing over my books every time i run up the stairs, and seeing 150 year old plaster oozing between the thin strips of wood holding it all in place.i have learned to shelve my books two layers deep, where i can. i have a fabulous old corner cupboard that i absconded from my parents garage. my father had kept his tools and gardening equipment in it for 30 years. but i thought it was much better suited to books. it's about 7 feet tall and full of books, 2 layers deep.i'm also firm in my belief that my books need to be surrounded with all the other curiousities that i find interesting. so they are at times haplessly thrown together. but it works for me. i need/want to see all the things around me that i love. in fact, several years ago, i decided to take the dors off our kitchen cupboards so i could see things better. i find if i don't see the things around me, i forget they are there. this is so much more manageable for me. but back to the books. there are so many. and i love each of them. this summer when i was moving studios i moved books with the wheelbarrow, loaded on a blanket to keep the remnants of dirt out of their pages. i still have the garage stacked high with the books i haven't moved. that will be a project for next summer. but the book room at chasing lightning bugs studio has enough beautiful piles that it is a perfect winter hideaway.and now back to organizing. and cleaning and preparing our house and our books for a new year.

there are few intimacies in life that can be shared the way a book can be. words on paper in beautiful worn editions, smelling of damp dust and appealing to my need for a few moments of quiet and solitude. i am drawn into book stores, mostly used book stores. or any place i can find a little treasure for my shelves. paris has my favorite books. little shops that are collapsing under the piles of volumes. sellers along the seine. old paper markets that set up in the square at certain metro stops. boxes of books and paper under tables at the marche aux puces at montreuil or saint-ouen. a book that has been held by many hands, that has absorbed the energy and emotions of people from different generations, is a special gift. it's enough to hold one of my favorite books for a few minutes, opened randomly, gulping a few sentences or swallowing several pages. with my favorites, that i have read and re-read for decades, i rarely need to read the entire book. it's a visit with the characters, the language, the images, the places. when i read the entire book i inhabit it all, but a little visit is sometimes better. there is no simpler pleasure than a brilliant book plucked from my own collection.