Studio News May 2025

Studio News - May 2025

Dear Subscriber First Name,

I hope this note finds you enjoying the glory of the season. I continue to work on my new garden, using the flowerbed closest to the front of the house as a propagation station. My goal is to focus on plants that have at least two purposes in addition to those beneficial to nature, such as food, dye, paper, scent. The leaves of the iris pictured above, make a strong paper and its purple blooms make a lovely green dye – a color hard to achieve, thanks to the relative instability of chlorophyll as a dyestuff.

There’s this dark red lily growing at the edge of the bed and of which I have only one – it perfumes the entire side yard. If only I could share this scent, milder than some lily scents, with you!

New Work

Enough about me and plants! Since the last update, I have completed the first nine copies of the standard edition of History of a People. This feat was a long time coming and is realized thanks in part to time spent in the Press at Colorado College this Spring.

History of a People, Standard Edition, closed

For this edition, the last of the series, my goal was to present the scents as specimens in a box reminiscent of a test tube rack, but I also wanted it to retain some of the symbolism of the unique and deluxe editions. Prior to this edition, there were several iterations of prototypes. At some point last year, I put the project aside to let the idea incubate before returning to it.

History of a People, Standard Edition, open

The break did some good, as breaks usually do! The downtime made space to resolve the larger issues I was having with designing the box. In this final version, the upper section of the rack is wood stained with indigo and the edges are painted red. Icons are included on the lower panel and the outer cover features a slightly raised Sankofa symbol. This standard, and last version of History of a People, will be a total edition of 20. Ten copies are available this year.

History of a People, Standard Edition, open

Click here to learn more about this series.

On View

Diasporic Dance, center

I want to speak for a moment about Diasporic Dance, the third artwork featured in the gallery of the History of a People installation in my exhibition, Unerased, now showing at the Colorado Springs Fine Art Center (on view until September 6, 2025). Many works in the show center around relationships, and this work was created as an acknowledgement of the similarities of festivals within African diasporic cultures.

Diasporic Dance consists of various colors of cotton fabrics I had on hand, which were curated before being cut into many, many strips and zigzagged to stabilize the ends. I have to thank my husband for help with this piece – he ironed every one of the fabrics, and then the strips before and after sewing. We were quite a team with this project!

Diasporic Dance

detail

Click here to view more exhibition images.

At the Craft Contemporary in Los Angeles, the unique version of History of a People will be on view in Ether: Aromatic Mythologies. The exhibition will also present an interactive installation of the scents used for the book. Many thanks to the folks at the National Museum of Women in the Arts, for loaning this work for the exhibition, which will be on view at the Craft Contemporary from May 30 through September 7, 2025. It seems fitting to share the essay, History of a People: Tracing Cultural Development Through Scent, with you in celebration of this exhibition.

History of a People, closed

History of a People, open

Also, if you are in the Los Angeles area between May 24 - June 1, 2025, be sure to check out Scent Week. Events include scent related exhibitions, workshops, open houses, panel discussions, and experiences. I’ve never been, but would love to attend one year. If you participate in any Scent Week events, or visit the exhibition (or both!), please drop me a line or tag me on Instagram and share your experience

Workshop

Finally, many thanks to all who signed up for my Adventure Travelogue workshop at Penland School of Craft the week of May 25 – 30. I’m so looking forward to meeting you and spending the week making books. See you soon!

As always, I am happy to hear your comments or answer questions.

More to come! ~alisa

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Kind Regards ~alisa