How we survive (2025). Indigo and inkjet on hanji. 2.5 x 2 x 0.5” closed, 4” wide open. One of a kind. Cynthia Sears Artists’ Books Collection.

This miniature book suggests making, demonstrated in word and deed within its pages, as a way towards connection with each other and the rest of the world. All pages are woven by hand from thread that was spun by hand from paper, then dyed with indigo.

how we survive
is to keep making things
tie         sew       bind      twine     fasten    interlace warp      weave    knot
to feel that connection
to the rest of the world

Sample Book Series III (a: Bearing witness; b: you can replenish yourself). Ink, natural dyes, beeswax on hanji, abaca paper & thread, and paper mulberry bark. 24.25 x 16 x 1.5” closed; dos-à-dos. One of a kind.

This dos-à-dos is the third in a series of sample book artists’ books. Aimee wrote the text and printed it via inkjet. She performed all of the surface treatments for the handmade papers and fibers, which include different types of indigo. Gasali Adeyemo made the Yoruba indigo vats in Cleveland in June 2024, which impart a different blue from the pre-reduced vat that Aimee set up at the Kalamazoo Book Arts Center during an NEA-funded residency in October 2024. Each volume of this series explores a different technique by folding narrative into technical experiments; here, indigo’s relationship with hanji and related fibers.

This book is inspired by the scale and color of lace sample books in St. Gallen, Switzerland, created by Iklé Frères and Co. Chemical in the first three decades of the 20^th century. Aimee saw these books at the Threads of Power: Lace from the Textilmuseum St. Gallen exhibition at the Bard Graduate Center’s Gallery in New York City in December 2022. Made at the close of a tumultuous year, this book also strives to create an expanse of calm, inspired by Agnes Martin drawings that Aimee first saw in the late 1990s at Oberlin College. As Helmut Becker noted about Martin, “Her work was influenced greatly by nature, however not in the sense of replicating nature – rather, she wanted the viewer to experience the same feelings they have when in front of nature.” Hopefully from this well of blue, we can rejuvenate ourselves for the challenges to come.