Hello Artist Collaborators,

I have finally gotten to a point where I can send you some news about the Janson Book Collaborative.

Once I received all the entry pages I sorted them by page orientation. There are 17 horizontal sets of art/texts and 87 vertical sets of art/text pages for a total of 104 entries. (I am counting each set of art/text as 1 entry.) My next step was to alphabetize the horizontal sets as one group and the vertical sets as another group.

All artists in each orientation group will appear together in the altered book so that the viewer doesn’t have to keep turning the book one way and another throughout the entire book.

Getting Makeba Kedem-DuBose’s text mounted for the altered book

By Gail Bloom

Here are some pages that will be in the book:

By Christy O’Connor

By photographer Elsa Voelcker

By Merrilyn Duzy

These are just a few of the entries!! I cannot even put into words all the incredible art and text I received! Every time I opened an envelope, I opened a gift!!!!!

My next step is to get all the art and text documented by photographs. I was at an artist’s group one evening when I was totally taken off guard when a professional photographer friend,

Elsa Voelcker VOLUNTEERED to photograph all art and text. I was speechless. What a tremendous GIFT!!! Elsa teaches photography at Saint Anslem College in Manchester, NH and Franklin Pierce University in Rindge, NH. I, we, have been blessed! Thank you so very much Elsa!

We had a date all set to do the photography several weeks ago, but we both got the respiratory flu and had to postpone our shoot. It will now be happening soon after March 10th. When the photography is all set, I will start putting the altered book together. If anyone has suggestions for naming our remake, I would love to hear them!!!

A big THANK YOU for all your meaningful art and your text plus an even bigger THANK YOU for your patience. This is a work in progress and it takes time………one step at a time.

The very best creative vibes to all of you,

Sue