So many reference books, so little time. It actually started with a book of Bach keyboard partitas on brittle, acidified-paper, withdrawn from the music library where I once worked. They are sacred texts; I couldn’t throw them away. I made earrings out of some snippets. Then I snipped a Handel’s Messiah. Then a Bach Mass in B-minor. Then atlases hopelessly full of Soviet Union and Rhodesia and then…
Golden Book encyclopedias from the late 1950’s. Boy playing with erector set, girl playing with dolls, mother in heels shoving casserole in the oven. What else could I do but cut that up? Also the beautiful bird drawings of Arthur Singer from a falling-apart field guide (See Mew Gull). Also handmade Nepalese paper, origami paper, an Animal Crackers box.
Also go-go wrapping paper that wishes it were a minidress.