Lou Cabeen Exhibit debuts her artist book FIELD NOTES Companion @ UW Miller Library

Over the four years that I was writing my chapbook, Field Notes to Maya Lin’s Confluence Project Landscapes, friend and artist Lou Cabeen asked permission to join my “journey” and to create an artist book to accompany it: FIELD NOTES Companion.

FIELD NOTES, Companion will be on display March 3-31, 2022 at the UW Miller Library, along with new work created by Cabeen during pandemic isolation.

Lou Cabeen’s FIELD NOTES Companion involved more than one letterpress studio and printshop in both pre-planning and planning stages. As a friend and collaborator, she invited me to visit many of the studios and introduce me to print shops and binders.

Let me share a bit about her Companion artist book with all its multiple layers. She used hand-stitched pressure plates to create the background texture of Indigenous words found at the Confluence sites.  The Columbia River was relief-printed using hand-carved linoleum blocks across the accordion-folded book. The text used from my chapbook, was printed using  polymer plates on a letterpress to print my collections of haiku from each site, later to be hand-sewn into the correct place along the river that inspired them.

Please come and enjoy her new work on display at the Miller Library from March 3-31st.

Two special events are scheduled in March:

Meet the artist event is Thursday, March 3rd, 5-7 pm

An artist talk, including me, will be on Saturday, March 19th, 1:30- 2:30pm.