Saturday

Early morning-- Jesse sleeping in the window plus two details done trying to get his face right.  Then, in preparation for helping my friend Margaret Couch Cogswell at her book signing in the afternoon, I deconstructed an Origami pocket booklet in order to figure out how to make it.   I drew each step of the unfolding so that I would remember how it was folded.  My job would be to walk around and help people fold their booklets while another friend, Michelle, gave the demo.  A couple of weeks ago Margaret had asked those of us in her critique group to help out with this demo, and Michelle had taught all of us how to fold the booklet.  I had had trouble folding mine, but deconstructing it and drawing made the process clear to me.  I sometimes have to draw things to understand how they work.

This page is all about Margaret and her wonderful artwork, which her book is about.  Margaret makes, among many other things, strange and darkly playful crowns, which she considers to be books.  I liked what she said about her idea when she first started making crowns.  She wondered What if we wore our stories [about ourselves and our lives] on our heads [where everybody could see them]?  And What if we wore our judgments about other people on our heads [right up there where everyone could see what we were thinking]? 

The crown at the top of the right hand side of the page has a papier mache bird with an egg balanced on its back nestled inside the leaves of the crown.  The middle one is called "Village Idiot."  And at bottom left is a sketch of a sculptural piece called Tessie.  Check out Margaret's book, which is called Book Play (New York: Sterling/Lark Publishing, 2013) and her blog at http://margaretcouchcogswell.blogspot.com/    You can order her book from Malaprop's Bookstore in Asheville at http://www.malaprops.com/ or if you're lucky enough to be in Asheville, drop in and pick up a signed copy from the bookstore.