Rebecca Childers

Eugene, Oregon

Armature

handmade cotton & abaca paper, dyed felt

6¼ x 5 x ¼ closed; 6¼ x 11½ x ¼ open

edition of 14

© 2011

$300

This book attempts to recapture in object form the childhood experience of being nestled close to my mother’s body under her winter cape. It recreates that primary experience of maternal shelter. The cover is felt dyed the same color as my mother’s cape, and the letterpress images, which are photographs of the original cape printed in flesh tones on handmade paper, move from external to internal (outside, then inside the cape), tracing in reverse the universal movement of birth...and articulation: “she spoke me out into the world anew.”

Rebecca Childers teaches letterpress, artist books, and Writing for Artists in the Department of Art at the University of Oregon. She holds an MFA in Nonfiction Writing from the University of Iowa and makes sculptural and editioned books under her imprint, The Seedbed of Irony Press, in Eugene, Oregon.