A little book of breathing

RESEARCH BACKGROUND AND SIGNIFICANCE A little book of breathing is an artist's book made specificaly for the exhibition String Books for the Braidwood gallery The Left Hand. The content of the book, the story and drawings, come from an online work first published in Verity La, This artist's book was created to make the experience of writing and drawing more tangible by creating a small book by hand as a kind of breathing exercise - sewing, cutting, folding, inking, pasting, waxing - by bringing together different suggestive elements so that the reader this little book can pause with her, breathe alongside the reading and turning of tissue pages to imagine the passing of time just before death as well as the passing of a 90-year old life; to imagine the drawing of a red line across lips. This artist's book was bought by the State Library of Queensland for their collection. RESEARCH CONTRIBUTION A Little Book of Breathing is an extension of previous work in making books exploring ideas of writing, drawing, breathing and making. In 2007 Francesca exhibited her work at the end of a joint residency in Switzerland (sponsored by Canberra Art School, ANU) in an exhibition entitled A Book of Breathing and then a further iteration of this 'jelly book' work was exhibited at the University of Canberra conference of the Australian Association of Writing Programs in a show entitled Another Book of Breathing. Reference to these 'jelly books' have been document in a number of places including: Jen Webb, 'The book of objects: writing and performance', Journal of Writing in Creative Practice, Intellect, vol 2, no 1, 2009. These books are research into what Webb calls 'sensory and family memory', 'research conducted by a writer, concerned with and focusing on language'.