Her Blue Body

Unique 5 x 5 inch quarter-circle book
Unfolds to 10-inch diameter half-sphere

In 7.5 x 5.125 x .75 inch slipcase

6 pages

2009

Text is a poem by Alice Walker, entitled "We Have a Beautiful Mother" published in 1991. It reads like a litany to Mother Earth and all forms of life on it, fishes and creatures and grasses and the planet itself as our mother. The poem reminds us we are all related and live on the same planet, and in the use of materials and source images I tried to portray that. I've written more about the creative process behind this book here and here.

Lettered and painted in acrylic, gouache, paste and inks on Arches Text Wove paper. Boards covered in Thai silk, circa 1960s. Lettering with broad pen in white gouache and acrylic ink. Slipcase by Don Drake, Dreaming Mind, Castro Valley, California

Each page unfolds from the quarter-circle form into a full circle, and the text of the poem may be read sequentially. It may also be unfolded and displayed as a scuptural form of a three-dimensional half-sphere, reminiscent of half the planet's face toward the sun and half in darkness. The book rests in the box "on point" and gives the feeling of Earthrise as we saw it forty years ago in photographs taken from the Apollo 11 mission to the moon in 1969.

Private collection.

The shape of the book recalls the shape of the dome of earth, with one face of the earth toward the sun, the other half in darkness.


Title page


Buffalo-shaped hills


The spiral of a school of fish echoes the circle of life.


The book partially opened. The backs of the pages are painted in pastel shades of the colors on the front of each circular folded page.


Emerging from its case, the quarter-circle book forms a mandorla shape while also revealing an Earthrise crescent. The book boards are covered with Thai silk, circa 1960s.