The book-of the-week for week 22 is titled
Patch-Work of the World. It's a collage of assorted pastepapers, prints, old book pages, maps, and assorted ephemera from trips to various countries all over the world. The crazy quilt styled cover is just one of the 16 collaged pages that make up the book. The spine is held together with a piece of bookcloth made from fabric printed with a postcard motif and a similar crazy quilt pattern.
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| The cover of Patch-Work of the World.. |
Looking down on the beautifully patterned pages there doesn't seem to be much of a relationship between the pieces... just like in the world. Oh well.
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| a bird's-eye view... |
Like a stained glass window, the colors seem to align in a mosaic of energy and emotion.. And like a prism hit by the sun... split into a rainbow of light.
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| like stained glass windows... |
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| Ghost paper, a piece of vintage tablecloth and a quote about The Book of the Dead... |
A collection of the everyday trappings of life from different places all over the world turns the exotic and foreign into the familiar and comfortable. They pull us closer together. Like a huge patchwork quilt... sewn together from thousands of tiny pieces.
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| Photograph of a tree on a farm in France... |
Whether it's something as simple as a poplar tree on a farm in the French countryside, or as exotic as crop circle designs mown into a wheat field in England...
nature still has a neutralizing effect on our cultural differences... The stars still have the same beauty whether shining over Norway or over Nigeria and a river still has the same magic whether it flows by Paris or Pittsburgh. Nature is the backing sheet for the quilt of our cultures.
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| a paper snowflake or crop circles in Great Briton... |
And sometimes our travels take us to a place that feels like home away from home.... and we keep returning.... like monarch butterflies or migrating birds...
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| sugar for coffee at McDonalds and an art supply store in Angers, France... |
...even if it's only in our memory.
