I’ve always been a documenter. I got my first diary when I was seven and my first camera by the time I turned ten. When I look through my first diary now, I can already see myself going against the “rules.” I tried using those pre-dated pages in earnest at the beginning of the year, but my seven-year-old self said no to those constraints pretty quickly. After so many days of, “Dear Diary, Nothing happened,” “Dear Diary, Nothing,” I drew arrows and wrote down the date to skip forward to when I felt I had a story worth telling.
Artist and textile designer Lulu de Kwiatkowski is also a documenter. She used personal photographs, journals, fabrics, paints, pens, and memories from her life to create a series of collages layered with color and meaning. And guess what? They’re all bound together in a beautiful book titled Lulu that we can all enjoy.
I bought the book this past summer, after it had been on my wish list for a couple of years. It may be my very favorite art book that I own, and I own a lot! Lulu wrote the introduction by hand, taking us through the stories of her life that lead her to creating this beautiful volume of work. She shares some of the stories of her book and subsequent art exhibitions on her blog, Trail of Inspiration.
I loved the sad, but beautiful story behind Into the Womb. Lulu did the collage in 2005 when her mother (whose photo was used in the piece) was first diagnosed with breast cancer. “It is called Into the Womb, meaning if she didn’t survive, she would run beautifully through the tunnel and be reincarnated into my womb.” Her mother lived for five more years and passed away on Christmas Eve, 2010.
If you’re a fan of mixed media collage work that’s overtly personal in nature, you have to see Lulu’s work. Seriously, if I were Oprah and I had a favorite things list, Lulu would be on top.
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