“. . . I also got to unfold the precious books of Diana Bloomfield. It was like Christmas. Or magic. Or both. I still hold my breath when I think of their fragility and beauty, and yet here they are, the most unique books you’ve ever seen, perched on shelves to make you tremble . . . “ - Ann Jastrab, Executive Director, Center for Fine Art Photography, Carmel, California & Curator of ‘Winter Blues: Contemporary Cyanotypes’ (Invitational Group Exhibit), February-June 2020, CPA
“Such accomplished and beautiful work… precise, playful, clearly loved in the process of making. What I truly enjoyed was how many ways this work might be experienced in person especially if given the permission to hold and move the pages and complex elements that make up each piece. In the time-honored treasure and marriage of nature collected and archived, the work clearly demonstrates the artist’s love of the subject, the concept and the physical act of creating wonder as in the trompe l’oeil stacked pages (referencing the leaves in Whitman’s Leaves of Grass) A pleasure to look at look and experience.” - Christopher James, Juror for the 2021 Denis Roussel Award, sponsored by Rfotofolio, August 2021
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Books as sculpture. I love the whole idea— the tactility, the 3-dimensionality, and the intimacy— so I started creating these one-of-a-kind handmade artist books in 2019, towards the end of my mission to create a piece of handmade art every day for a year. These books incorporate details from my gum bichromate and cyanotype prints, including cyanotype photograms, comprising imagery from The Old Garden series, which I also began during this one-year project.
An image made by hand, in 19th century printing techniques, combined with something as simple as a backyard garden, seemed to mesh well with the hand-made tactile quality of these books. Perfectly imperfect and all made by hand— from the garden to the print to the bound book— just seems right. I also appreciate the liberation that stems from literally deconstructing my own handmade prints to build a totally different art form, one that creates new meanings and new ways of seeing.
And now, when I create a handmade print, it somehow seems unfinished. I look forward to folding, sewing, and binding that print into yet another fantastic art form— one where the details create the whole.
Origami Accordion Book, Ginkgo Leaves 2018 (1/1) Cyanotype Photogram. (This taken when on view at the Norton Museum of Art, West Palm Beach Florida, in Out of the Box: Cameraless Photography (February-June 2019), curated by Norton’s Photography Curator, Tim Wride. This book was also acquired for the Norton’s Permanent Collection.
To Look for the Whelks (Mary Oliver, from her poem, Whelks). Toned cyanotype, printed on Japanese Gampi paper- and using book cloth and marbled paper. I love the magical structure of this “surprise box” (ala Bep van Gasteren). Little books will go inside each interior box. I hope to make more of these!
Another “Surprise Box” - this one called “Bird Box,” made of abandoned nests, and waxwings, from my yard. Cyanotype on Japanese Gampi paper, this is a one-of-a-kind, constructed in 2023, and has now been sold.
Surprise ‘Bird Box’ 2023 1/1 SOLD
Cyanotype on Japanese Gampi paper