Book artist: Miriam Schaer

Artist: Miriam Schaer
Website: Miriam Schaer

As I became involved with books, I began to study their history and forms. I discovered an ancient structure called the girdle book: prayer books worn by medieval monks, lashed to their belts, their girdles, so their prayers would always be at hand. I had a different vision. My girdle books would contain new objects of devotion, new prayers, contemplations. Girdles are binders, like notebooks, places to hold and keep stories, house ideas in structures that are used to push and mold the female figure into idealized and often unreal shapes. Working with the girdle form has been a process of healing; learning to love the femaleness of my body and be comfortable in my own skin.

Alongside the girdles, other garment books also have taken shape. I began to use baby clothing because their scale is workable for books, but their significance immediately became apparent. They became receptacles for my memories of childhood: idealized vs. painful. These pieces explore issues of childhood and motherhood. My own feelings about my infertility live in work created out of toddler dresses and baby rompers. Gloves and hand-shaped drying forms comprise another body of work that explores the hand as a most basic sign of human communication- a greeting, a warning, surrender and embrace are all communicated through hand gestures.

I use the language of clothing. Frozen and stiff, the garment becomes immobile, as if the wearer evaporated, leaving a only a shell. They become places. Enclosures. Upon opening, the ghost of the missing person still remains in the echo of the garment’s frozen shape. When opened what remains are fragments, small found objects and books nestled within. They are the distilled essence of the story, the one left behind by the “person” once living there. New homes for stories I collect.

Image info (top to bottom)

Batter My Heat: A Wall Street Valentine, 2008, Girdle, Acrylic, shredding money, pins, digital printing. 20 x 25 x 15. Text by John Donne

One Heart, 2004, 14 x 17 x 9, girdle, acrylic, silk, indian hand made paper. Inset hand-shaped book, combination codex/accordion, 6 x 4 x 24 long when opened. Text by Emily Dickinson, Poem number 6, from Part One: Life

Hands of Josephus: Part 2, 2008, 10.5 x 4 x 28, altered text from Josephus: History of the Jews, beads, wire hand forms