Ste. Ostrich in Manhattan: The Visitations of a Martyr
By Lois Morrison. Follow the ornithic saint as she calls at notable NYC sights. This sometimes off-the-wall and always entertaining story is brought to life with Morrison's illustrations and engaging page construction. Each spread of the accordion book is layered with four printed sheets that are "short-sheeted" at the front, to create a series of dioramas. Pages are sewn in blue-green thread at the fore edge. Housed in a bright-yellow, cloth-covered folder, the book can be removed for carousel display. 1990.
$275

Cows
(a Morrison family effort)
2003. Edition of 25.
8.75 x 5.75" printed with a Gocco printer in Comic-Sans MS on Strathmore drawing 400 Series. Returned to with various markers and colored pencils. Handcut and assembled. Cover is Lokta Pinto over boards. Three pop-up cows on tabs grace each page fold in an accordion structure.

This is a collaboration between two cousins and their grandmother, Lois Morrison. It discuses the kinds of cows and how to treat them - "Don't upset them or offend them."
$15

Love Re-Turned
Written, illustrated, handcut, and bound by Lois Morrison. From the text: "I am told a worm has ten hearts with which to show affection. But with ten hearts how does it choose its amorous connection?" This is the beginning of a delightful rhyme written by Morrison. The words, printed in a typeface called Kids, seem to float up from a background of grass. The artist writes that the book was inspired by 'an e-mail animal fact', that worms have ten hearts . . . sent by Tamara Panteon in Chile to her father in the U.S.A. Their fantasies joined by mine prompted this exploration of just what, romantically, this fact could mean to worms." Brightly colored, grommeted sections make for a very wiggly worm. Gocco printed on various papers. A colorful, spool-knit worm closes each copy. Accordion fold with pop-ups. The fourteen page book includes seven movable sections. Edition of 25. (4.25 x 4.25 inches.)
$300 (Last Copy!)

Incarnations
2003. Edition of 25.
Color copied and printed with a Gocco printer then returned to with Pigma Micron pens, colored pencil, water colors and Painters medium opaque paint marker. Type: Bard. Hand-cut, grommeted, assembled and bound. Fine, snakeskin and Cave's blue jean paper over boards. Enclosed in vintage feed sack material and lasped with three vintage buttons. Reviewing the possibilities of the life of the snake found flattened in the driveway - from Medusa's head to a garter-snake-in-the-grass.
$450 (Two copies remaining!)

Ste. Ostrich & St. Valentine
2002. Edition of 3.
Folds to 5.25" x 8.25" Constructed in the form of a pink silk stocking. Characters are sewn onto the stocking on both sides. Words are in voice bubbles like comic book characters. Lettering is in red while characters are in cloths of purple, dark pink, and other accent colors. Stocking is folded into a cloth-lined cloth envelope style case with embroidered titles. Envelope closed with an ostrich head tab and crocheted loop. Housed in folding case with red cloth boards, closed with same type of ostrich head (two) and crocheted looping. There is also a red cloth bag with blue rectangles for the whole to slip into. From Morrison: "Vintage kimono fabric is the background. The figures are woodcut rubbings that have been cut out and appliquéd. My granddaughter did the calligraphy which was then embroidered. It is enclosed in a stocking bag made from a vintage chicken feed sack. The buttons are Fimo that has been pressed into a woodcut." A delightful, colorful book art work.
$1,250

Through a Glass Darkly
2000. Edition of 4.
7.5" x 9.3 x .85" The text, 1 Corinthians 13:12 King James Bible, is hand lettered on scratch-lite. Multiple images, transparent and other, are laminated between distressed plastic. It is held together by brass rings. The base and case are covered with bunting from a 4th of July celebration. A plastic mirror is laminated to the base. The case is lined with Lana Ingres and secured with beads and tape. Four blue plastic pages with darkly seen images and text unfolded one by one to reveal a mirror in which one sees "face-to-face."
$400

What's He Got Up His Sleeve?
1992. Edition of 8.
Arms are gocco printed, sewn, cut, found. Arms in felt, fabrics, metals, papers, and plastic laminates. In box. Vintage cuffs form the covers of this book which is filled with baby arms, Popeye's muscled arms, skeleton arms and more in all sizes and colors. Morrison's wandering mind takes up the question of "What's He Got Up His Sleeve?" then proceeds to give several possibilities.
$275 (Two copies remaining!)

Dead Kites
1993. Edition of 9.
7.25" x 7.75 x .25" Uses Garamond. Text and drawings printed on tissue paper with a Gocco printer. Laminated to tissue paper hands from a Mexican political banner. 18 laminated kite pages held together with one ring from which hangs crewel thread simulating a kite's tail. Housed in white pictorial cloth bag with button closure. "The little kites, flown from those flat roofs in Mexico City, hang tangled for months from the wires."
$200

The Gadarene Swine: Luke 8:26-33 & Later
1993. Edition of 25.
A two part book, enclosed in single case with red cloth boards using a button and crewel clasp. Two accordion books laid-in folded green paper which is attached to the interior boards. One fold-out is the Biblical text is from the King James version of the Bible with illustrations. The second fold-out text "Later" is written by Lois Morrison who also illustrated, lettered, and bound this total production. Printed on Lenox 100 and Arches Text Wove with a Gocco Printer. Returned to with watercolor and ink. SIGNED by Morrison. A tunnel book tells the biblical story of the swine jumping off the cliff and drowning. An accordion-fold book tells what happens later as people begin breeding the Gadarene swine.
$250

In Adam's Fall
1989. Edition of 44.
4.5" x 6 x 3/8" SIGNED by Morrison. A Jacob's ladder style book. Each panel double-sided with illustration of bodies intertwined on each panel. Slipcase for book a clear plastic envelope with black ribbon tie as closure. Written, illustrated, hand-cut and published by Morrison. Printed on Lenox 100 by Julie Chen's Flying Fish Press. From Lois Morrison: "A Jacob's ladder book in which cut out couples literally "fall" through Adam's guilt but are redeemed by Eve's Perspective."
$175

In the Land of Shadows
Lois continues her broken doll series with the largest of her works to date and perhaps her darkest. The message seems to be a metaphor for any shock or disappointment or loss. "All is well in the land of Shadows until the Black Menace appeared humming in the sky." Six one sided panels reveal the Menace and other figures, all gocco printed onto Crosse Pointe synei. The panels are covered with hand dyed ticking over boards. All hand cut and assembled with crudely made boxes that are hinged with hand dyed twill tape. Closed 9 inches square by 57 inches opened. Edition of 18.
$1200

Oblivion Lost
A six paneled book with drawings of exposed tree roots and animal skulls found beside the road near Morrison's house in Virginia. A snapping turtle, a raccoon, and owl lore, etc. fill the front of the panels and the back of the panels have the description of the finds and the family finders. Printed with a gocco printer on oriental paper and gone back into with Pigma Microi pens and watercolors (beavers' teeth). Piano wires support the skulls and balsa strips support the wires. Covers are an African cloth over board held together with hand dyed rayon seam binding. Held by a bone clasp. Edition of 25. 2002.
$700

Changelings
A miniature artist book about secretly carnivorous clouds. Morrison's ability to see the darker otherside of events and objects is always balanced by her wit and the ever-delightful presentation of her books. Looking at clouds from both sides now (like the pop-music classic), Morrison observes that they may not necessarily be the benign shapes we project upon them to soothe ourselves, but rather, "changeling monsters, dropping softly to the ground, surrounding and muffling all cries with dense fog." This three-layer carousel accordion depicts a background landscape; pop-out clouds; and a thin band of poetic text in the foreground. The back side of the accordion is humorously decorated with text balloon quotes of fog-prompted shrieks. Gocco printed images are enhanced with Pigma pens and watercolor. Hand lettered text, decorated paper over board covers, tie closure. Hand cut and assembled. Edition of 25. (2.75 inches square; 5 spreads.) A delight.
$200

The Mechanical Baby
In this third installment in her saga of the dolls, and following her practice of using found objects as inspiration, Morrison continues to explore survival and aloneness in an oddly melancholic, yet hopeful tale. (I recall a line from Emily Dickinson: "After great pain, a formal feeling comes . . .") In this edition, the actual "baby" of the title is a rusty old toy that, wires exposed, is missing a head and is crouched in an eternal crawling position. Color Xerox pop-outs of the doll, photographed from different vantage points, crawl across a black and white, Gocco-printed, accordion-fold landscape that was drawn from the terrain around the artist's summer residence. There is the suggestion of autonomy, the survival of the spirit, inherent in the series, which began with her titles, The Hollow Dolls (1998) and After (1999). The lonely, isolated determination of the mechanical baby is an emblem of will, which moves us forward in the face of despair despite the odds. The terrain could be the landscape of memory or loss, at once a shared and an individual experience. With spare text, the pages are haunting, dreamlike. The reader is drawn into an altered world, and perhaps touches an altered, contemplative state. Gocco prints on Magnani Pescia paper; Amherst type. Color copied dolls laminated onto acid-free drawing paper. Color Gocco-printed cotton over board covers with ribbon ties. Hand cut and assembled. Edition of 25. (6.25 x 4.5 inches; 8 spreads.)
$250 (Three copies remaining!)

Endangered Species
Embedded in the brightly colored, engagingly explosive pop-ups of this artist's book is a serious and urgent message. Softening the delivery to reach her audience, Morrison draws us into the heart of her message through elaborate flower constructions that bloom forth from the pages. The paper petals are quietly adorned with reprinted pencil drawings of children whose lives are cut down or stunted by societal abuse and neglect. These buds of youth disappear into the folds of the bloom as they disappear from our view, hidden behing the curtained borders of other countries, other neighborhoods, and our own disire not to see. Barely visible within the pistil atop the flower, the place of regeneration, are handwritten words that represent, instead, the seeds of destruction—guns, knives, infanticide, drugs, landmines, etc. A latinate species name on each spread locates us in the particular place of the tragedy. Five spreads. Color copied, Gocco printed, and hand-colored from original drawings. Accordion bound between cloth covered boards with tie closure and housed in a soft cloth wrapper. Edition of 25. (7 x 9 inches.)
$850

Fibbonaci Crow's
On the proliferation of birds in a New Jersey town. "Once there were no crows in Leonia. Then there was one, another, then a third, and increasing like a Fibonacci sequence, they now cover the trees." The mathematical sequence, recognized by Fibonnaci, explains the patterns of sunflower seeds and the chambered nautilus. Single spread, with winglike pop-out, displays the sequence pictorially through the increase of birds per folded section of paper. (Hint for the mathematically uninclined: add the two previous groupings to arrive at the next. That is: 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, etc.) Gocco printed on Fabriano Tiziano. Some crows are pasted to foam and glued down so they rise slightly away from the page, adding visual interest. Bound in green sharkskin paper over boards. Signed edition of 25. (10.5 x 3.25 inches.)
$175

After
Text, illustration, and binding by Lois Morrison. This accordion fold book tells the story of a gathering of broken dolls following a disaster. "After it was all over they gathered and found the world was as beautiful as ever," but they had been changed. In the middle two folds of the book, the dolls float above the long drawing of an herbaceous border. Color-copied background landscapes, photographs of broken dolls, and Gocco printed black and white missing doll parts. On Canson me Tientes and Masa papers. Hand cut and assembled. Thai Soft Unru paper over boards. Four folds. Edition of 25. (8.5 x 5.5 inches.)
$225

The Hollow Dolls
Written, illustrated, handcut, and bound by Lois Morrison. The continuing saga of the dolls from After (see above.) The dolls had found themselves "altered forever-but nothing else was." Through the shattered dolls, these two books explore the experience of surviving a trauma and being forever changed, while the world continues on as it was. Here, in a "magic purse" construction that releases only one box at a time, the dolls lay in one side and the text in the other. Hand drawn dolls with loosely grommeted parts. Color-copied backgrounds, photographic leftovers with Gocco printed inserts. On Canson me Tientes and Masa papers. With covers of Indian Bagasse and Moriki papers over boards. Edition of 18. (Approx. 4.25 x 10 x 1.25 inches; 12 pp.)
$300 (Three copies remaining!)

Amber
Text, illustrations, and binding by Lois Morrison. From the text: "In all the writing about insects trapped in amber rarely does anyone write about what it must have been like for the insects who were so caught." Printed in black with a Gocco printer on street-salvaged amber-colored filter (celluloid) and laminated. Small grommets in each page allow the book to be worn as a necklace. Morrison writes that "the imperfections of the filter's previous street life are much like those in real amber. The insects and bits thereof are drawn from what was on my cabin floor this spring." Seventeen pieces strung on a black, braided cord with clasp. Enclosed in a simple, slotted paper case. Edition of 25.
$125

Lois Morrison Out of Print Title:
Persephone
The Egg Queen
The Yellow Goat
Baucis and Philemon