My art-making is an integrated mode of inquiry that links concept and media in an ongoing dialogue - a visible means of exploring meaning.

I am a painter by training and collage-maker by nature who began my experimental printmaking with reprographic machines. Since being introduced to computers in the late 1960’s when working on my doctorate at Penn State, I have combined traditional and digital media. My work includes large-scale mixed media pieces, artist books and book-like objects that bridge between these two forms. It embeds archetypal symbols and fragments of image and text in multiple layers of texture and meaning. It combines the humblest of materials, plaster, tar, wax and pigment, with the latest in technology to evoke the past and herald the future. My art-making is an integrated mode of inquiry that links concept and media in an ongoing dialogue - a visible means of exploring meaning.

In the past ten years books have become increasingly important to me. Most are produced with little or no digital component, Dorothy Simpson Krause Artbooks  

 However a couple of years ago, I discovered the online gallery of the British Library, “Turning the Pages ."

They have digitized the pages from 15 books, ranging from a sketchbook of Leonardo to Lewis Carroll’s original Alice. The digitized pages have been placed into a software package that allows you to physically control the turning of the pages by dragging your mouse in a motion similar to that which your hand would make.

Intrigued by the presentation and the concept, I made a concerted search to find a similar software. I anticipated it would be a complicated and expensive program, and was amazed to find a simple “Flipping Book” software package for a modest cost from FlippingBook .

I downloaded the “Flash SWF Object”, which seemed to be simpler to use in a website than the “Flash Component”. I decided on a page format, resized my images to fit, saved them as 72dpi jpgs and changed the names to numbers. I put them all into the FlippingBook folder, told the template the page dimensions and image numbers and  completed my first flipbook in less than an hour. “India” was the result. 

The images in “India ” came from a visual journal incorporating ephemera I gathered during three weeks in the winter of 2004 when I traveled to Bombay, Jaipur, Agra, Delhi, Chennai and Goa.

The series of printed images were photographed for incorporation into the flipbook and the "page turning" presentation became another iteration of the art-making process.

My second flipbook was created in 2006 in response to the question, "What can an individual do about the war in Iraq?" It first existed as a drum leaf book, 5.75" x 5.5", with acrylic paste paint and collagraph printed pages on Fabriano paper. It has ceramic covers painted with acrylic and red kangaroo spine. 9/11 

The cover and the pages of the book were scanned and text was added in Photoshop to complete the page-turning flipbook. Flipbook Template

As a final step, the text was isolated from the Photoshop image files, printed on clear film and transferred onto the book pages.

I decided I wanted to try embedding flash movies as well as jpg files into the Flipping Book software. Since I had never used Flash, it was a more of a challenge than I had anticipated. For the flipbook "Palimpsest", I used hosta leaves discovered, scanned and shared by my long-time Studio Manager, Mary Taylor. The term palimpsest is most commonly defined as a parchment or paper on which partially erased text is still visible, but it may also refer to an object, place, or area that reflects its history. In Photoshop and Flash I combined the scanned images with text to produce time-based files. Unlike my earlier "page turning" books, which were based on physical objects, "Palimpsest" only exists as a virtual book. Palimpsest Template

 Working with a wide range of materials and technologies allows me to explore concepts in multiple ways, to work recursively, and to utilize a body of work to create variations of projects. It is a rich and rewarding way to extend the potential of the creative process. And, with the challenges of mastering new software, I never have time to be bored!