New Mexico Memory Box

Many years ago after helping launch and promote two amazing exhibitions at the National Museum of Women in the Arts, I took a trip to New Mexico to visit some of the artists and places they work and live that were featured in the two exhibitions. The exhibitions were The Legacy of Generations: Pottery by Native American Women and Woven by the Grandmothers: Nineteenth-Century Navajo Weavings from the National Museum of the American Indian (beautiful exhibition catalogues if you can find an old copy). While on the trip I did my usually excessive photographing of everything I saw. I also collected many things along the way, tickets to enter museums, menus from restaurants, brochures from places visited, event a ting bag of soil. I collected these items and made the New Mexico Box Book.

The box was cut our of heavy Bristol board and covered in brown paper recalling the ground we so firmly walked on while in New Mexico. the inside of the box was covered with tissue paper of dragon flies. The box is stitched together with a heave hemp thread and then waxed to create a matted sheen. The book is an accordion that you pull out of the box to read the book. The pages hold items collated on the trip that have been hand sewn on onto the pages.