2024 was a productive year. I created several different book series during my 1.5 years as a Folger Institute Fellow. These three flower books are in response to Shakespeare's Sonnet 54.
Sonnet 54 explores how "beauty" appears much more beautiful and attractive when it is accompanied by truth and honesty. Creating textile flowers for the book covers allowed me to experiment with a wide range of tones that exist between light (fair) rose and dark (crimson) rose. The variation of colors gave the covers luscious texture and visual depth.
"O how much more doth beauty beauteous seem/ By that sweet ornament which truth doth give!"
This series of books use hyper-decorative flowers, bursting from the stems, made from fabric, play with the idea that ornaments usually don't have utilitarian purposes. Instead, ornaments are used to make something more appealing or attractive. However, even though the flowers on my book covers seem fragile, they are designed to be very durable and functional as protective covers for contents (fabric pages) of the books.
