Susan Joy Share ~ Alaska

Traverse
By Susan Joy Share
Anchorage, Alaska: 2002. One-of-a-Kind.

5 x 5 x 8" with fan binding. Materials include steel anchor, felted wool, handmade paper, wire, colored pencil, and collage. Binding is lashed with wire to a steel railroad anchor.

Share explores the book as structure, sculpture, and as a container for words and images. In this piece she has taken a steel railroad anchor to form a flower with page-like petals that unfold.
$485

The Shpilkes Series, needle books      

Susan Joy Share: "My mixed media needle books, the Shpilkes Series, contain miscellaneous typed quotes and phrases, images, multi-colored handmade felt, and collected stitch work. The pages of these functional containers for pins and needles are machine sewn to an accordion folded fabric strip to form a codex.

"Szpilka is a Polish word meaning nail. The Anglo-Yiddish phrase, to be on shpilkes means sitting on pins and needles, having nervous energy and being anxious or impatient."

Off the Edge Brilliance
By Susan Joy Share
Anchorage, Alaska: Susan Joy Share, 2011. Series variant, unique.

9 x 6 x 2”; 6 pages. Materials: handmade felt, handmade paper, Mylar, cardboard, threads, button, machine embroidery, pins, and needles. Machine stitched binding with cardboard and mylar covers. Signed and dated.

Susan Joy Share: "The cover fabric and embroidery are from Thailand and Viet Nam. [Off the Edge Brilliance] has hand crocheted section with needle felted dots, wood block print of female statues at the Getty Museum, silk screen of medieval female armor on back cover."
$265

Measure Up
By Susan Joy Share
Anchorage, Alaska: Susan Joy Share, 2011. Series variant, unique.

4.5 x 7x 1.5"; 10 pages. Materials: handmade felt, handmade paper, cardboard, acrylic, Tyvek, Mylar, plastic ruler, pins, and needles. Handsewn binding. Sewn and decorated cardboard covers with magnetic closure. Signed and dated.

A page of tipped on action verbs convey the message of "Measure Up" – squeeze, flex, swerve, brandish, beckon, search ....
$175

Pinned as Prescribed
By Susan Joy Share

Anchorage, Alaska: Susan Joy Share, 2011. Series variant, unique.

5.5 x 4 x 1"; 10 pages. Materials: handmade felt, gel medium, fabric, thread, Mylar, pins, and needles. Machine stitching. Bound in cloth with gel medium. Machine stitched binding.

Susan Joy Share: "Images [include] kitchen utensils from vintage catalog, numbers from vintage price chart, self-portrait with spikes."
$150

Bare Feet
By Susan Joy Share
Anchorage, Alaska: Susan Joy Share, 2009. One-of-a-Kind.

4.75 x 3.5 x 1"; 12 pages. Cloth, paper, handmade and machine made felt, plastic mesh, photos, acrylic, pins, and needles. One typed text page.

And forget not that the earth delights to feel your bare feet and the wind longs to play with your hair.
                                                       ~ Kahlil Gibran

(SOLD)

Great Outfit
By Susan Joy Share
Anchorage, Alaska: Susan Joy Share, 2009. One-of-a-Kind.

5.5 x 3.5 x .75"; 10 pages. Cloth, paper, handmade and machine made felt, cicada wings, photos, acrylic, pins, and needles. One typed text page.

Great outfit, mostly klunky, never wore it again.
do I want this ???????? I have no idea.
sensitive to changes ??? You bet.
Failed to address question - just one of the problems.

(SOLD)

Now in the Mountains
By Susan Joy Share
Anchorage, Alaska: Susan Joy Share, 2009. Series Variant.

5 x 4 x 1"; 10 pages. Materials: paper, board, acrylic, felt, Mylar, pins, and needles. Machine stitched pages.

From the series of Shpilkes books. Shpilkes is Yiddish for nervous energy, hence (?) on pins and needles. The title of this book comes from John Muir's quotation (from his My First Summer in the Sierra), which has been typed on paper and stitched into the book.

"We are now in the mountains and they are in us, kindling enthusiasm, making every nerve quiver, filling every pore and cell in us…."

(SOLD)

Sad Iron II
By Susan Joy Share
Anchorage, Alaska: Susan Joy Share, 2009. Series Variant.

5 x 3.5 x 1"; 10 pages. Materials: cloth, paper, hand- and machine-made felt, photos, Tyvek, acrylic, pins and needles. Machine stitched pages.

From the series of Shpilkes books. Shpilkes is Yiddish for nervous energy, hence (?) on pins and needles. Included among the pins, needles, and cloth pages is an image of a sad iron heater, used to heat irons. (Sad in this case was a term for solid, heavy, or dense.)
(SOLD)

Soft Sanity
By Susan Joy Share
Anchorage, Alaska: Susan Joy Share, 2009. One-of-a-Kind.

4.5 x 3.5 x 1"; 12 pages. Handmade and machine-made felt, cloth, paper, Mylar, colored pencil, pins, and needles.

Safety pins, straight pins, needles pierce the pages.

                    soft sanity
                       romantic hard edges
                  lone tip toe
                       stark knee jerk

                                      wrapped attitude
                  protected bottom line

                  point shoot pierce
                         bask pine eat sigh

(SOLD)