Inspired by: Candace Hicks

Never enough time, right? I just couldn't fathom the time it took Candace Hicks to make these stitched composition books I checked out at the Center for Book Arts last week. Candace gave an artist talk and I was impressed by her painstaking work and punny, self-deprecating humor.

Every line of the canvas pages, every letter and the covers are all stitched by hand. She has a full time job, a kid, and reads A LOT. All the stitched books are basically about the books she reads. Her stitched composition books document the coincidences she finds in her readings from one book to the next, like new words or an odd phrase that repeats like, "stuffed mountain lion" or "black currant lozenge".

Some of the books are massive, like 2 x 3'. Turning the pages is like exploring a game, because each has some new element to investigate; zippers revealing the back of a page, folds, pockets and of course the text itself.

If you're in NY you should go see/touch/read these fabric books!

Here are some vine videos I took to give you a sense of what flipping through the pages is like...