2023. 15” x 12” accordion book with linen/cotton blend bookcloth cover, hand-painted endpapers, and six hand-colored prints of the same print. Edition of three, each with different hand-painted endpapers, each with six different hand-colored prints of the same print, one per page.
Narrative from the Title Page
Artists are always outdoors on Quiet Island, drawing, painting, and some building sculptures in hidden places for Islanders to find knowing they will disappear with the next storm. Even on rainy days artists are outdoors making art. One enthusiast, in the mid-1940s, made a simple ink and pencil drawing of a pine grove where two trees still stand in a meadow, pine grove yards behind, and near where wild dogwoods bloom in early May. Many years later her granddaughter made prints of this drawing and colored them in, some vivid and semi-realistic and others dreamy nonsense. She used the colored pencils her grandmother kept in two cigar boxes (warm colors in one box and cool colors in the other) and the felt tip pens laying around the house. Purple trees, blue grass, and other colors she chose with curiosity to see how it would turn out in the end.
Quiet Island, the imaginary island, is within the sweep of the North Atlantic Drift of the Gulf Stream and inside the arm of land which keeps away the hurricanes that hit most everywhere else nearby.
A few hundred or so people live on this island. Houses are basic, cars are shared, libraries are popular, and people bake a lot. And they brew too, because while they’re quiet, they are social. Many have relatives who visit, and some bring friends with them, particularly for the varied (and some invented) holidays.
For inquiries, contact The Kelmscott Bookshop.