Kokin, Lisa: Communiqué

Communiqué is part of my ongoing Bookscrapping series in which I mine my studio for scraps and unsuccessful pieces, cut them up and combine them with other textiles to form books without readable text or plot. The viewer has a tactile relationship with the work and intuits meaning from that experience. The cover of Communiqué is a scrap acquired at an estate sale; a woman (presumably) was practicing her buttonhole stitching with varying degrees of success. Asemic text and oblique social commentary are present in the work despite the absence of actual text. Things are falling apart domestically and globally, and many people are worried. Bookscrapping is a method of joining disparate parts to form wholes, a kind of hopeful metaphor for our troubled times. And, of course, it is a pun on scrapbooking. I can never resist a good (or bad) pun.

I use my sewing machine as an improvisational tool and chance as a collaborator. The substrate for most of the pages is industrial felt, both wool and synthetic. The asemic text is made from the pre-set alphabets on my sewing machine which I mess with in an unpremeditated way. This is my way of drawing. Aside from felt and thread, additional materials are linen, silk, cotton, cord, and a zipper.

Note that Communiqué comes with an off-white industrial felt envelope (not pictured).