The Stranger aka The Hair Book

altered book w hair & accessories

The Hair Book, is an altered book using Albert Camus’ L’étranger (The Stranger) as a component in a multi-faceted art work in which I invited individuals, many unknown to each other, to select a page. An individual page would become their page, with only one person per page. Participants chose a page based on their knowledge of the novel, a passage, phrase, word, favorite number, or even a page selected at random. Once a page had been chosen, I asked them to mark their selection and then tape a snippet of their hair to the page. I carried this project (together with scissors, tape, and pencil) with me on travels between Seattle, Paris, Bordeaux, San Francisco, and Chicago, often inviting complete strangers to participate.

Concurrently I was working on a series of etchings in which this unique object served as the source. Paired pages of the book were selected and positive transparencies for photo-etchings were prepared. Once etched, the images were enriched by engraving and printed using chine-collé, some with Japanese paper or 18^th and 19^th century French papers from my collection. Two of the etchings were exhibited in the Salon de mai at the Grand Palais in Paris. An index by page number records the names of the participants, except for some who remain anonymous.

Coming soon: my book, Du Regard à la Vision, a limited edition livre de luxe with five aquatints and poem, The Panther, by Rainer Maria Rilke.  Publisher: Editions Lacourière Frélaut, Paris, France.