On the last
day of her artists books class -- to Caydance and the class -- students presented their work. Some had evolved over the semester. In the computer paper wallpapered doll house, dioramic action that began with a domestic fight in the kitchen, progressed not only in a series of diorama rooms but also in the code printed on the walls. And, on an accompanying disk, the wallpaper-imprinted code ran an interactive narrative.
The hand painted images and texts celebrating black artists who died of AIDS were now -- like a medieval book of hours -- bound in tooled leather. From the interior of the view-ported backpack, an audio tape of spoken campground observations and amateur sung camping songs emerged. From the accordion fold book, which when unfolded revealed images of movie dances, issued a mix of movie film dance music, played on the accordion.
At midterm, some students had begun new books. Not surprisingly, some of these works centered on the impact of the earthquake. One student created an unfolding map with hand-drawn scenes of earthquake shattered buildings, bridges, roads, and deeply scarred natural landscapes. Her partner had recorded sounds heard during the earthquake, and the two projects worked together. The use of sound in several works was not usual. As often happened, students were inspired by each other's works, and thus, different themes ran through works created in different semesters.