I would like to
paint the way a bird sings.
~ Claude Monet
I loved Christmas
until I grew up and realized
I had to make it happen!
~ an exasperated customer at the Living Cornerstone bookstore
Beware of paying attention
or going back to what you once were,
when God wants you to be something
that you have never been.
~ Oswald Chambers

Experience is something you don't get
until just after you need it.

~ unknown
a children's book is
any book
a child will read.
~ Madeleine L'Engle
Two classes of human beings defy
psychological categorizing
and are full of surprises:
Poets and Saints.
~ Sigmund Freud
Do not have your concert first, and then
tune your instrument afterwards.
Begin the day with the Word of God and prayer,
and get first of all into harmony with Him.
~ Hudson Taylor
When you have exhausted all the possibilities,
remember this -
you haven't.
~ Thomas Edison

"Maybe you've not yet tasted
your favorite food"
(regarding the feast prepared for us in heaven) 

~ Randy Alcorn in Tell Me About Heaven
The best translation of the word "love"
is the name Jesus;
That will tell us everything about love
we need to know.
~ Canon Tallis

Don`t cry yet;
there`s still God!

~ Carissa Cooper
All shall be well
and all shall be well
and all manner of things shall be well.
~ Julian of Norwich

Remember that
the darkest hour
only lasts 60 minutes

~ on the girls' bathroom wall/Gordon College

Use what talents you possess:
the woods would be very silent
if no birds sang there
except those that sang best.

~ Henry Van Dyke

Spiritual warfare
isn't just casting out demons;
it's Spirit-controlled thinking
and attitudes.

~ Dean Sherman/YWAM

Hope means hoping
when things are hopeless,
or it is no virtue at all.
Faith means believing the incredible,
or it has no virtue at all.

~ G.K. Chesterton
It is the nature of grace
always
to fill spaces
that have been empty.
~ Goethe
The first demand any work of art
makes upon us is surrender.
Look.  Listen.  Receive.
Get yourself out of the way.
~ C.S. Lewis

Even if you're on the right track
you'll get run over if you just sit there.

~ Will Rogers

When God wants to show you what human nature is like separated from Himself, He shows it to you in yourself.

~ Oswald Chambers
If you're going through Hell,
don't stop!
~ a great song I can't remember (anyone know?)

One good thing about being wrong
is the joy it brings to others.

~ unknown
Planting seeds
inevitably
changes my feelings
about rain.
~ Luci Shaw (from her poem "Forecast")

When writing,
be more or less
specific

~ unknown
Doubt comes from a struggling mind.
Unbelief comes from a struggling will.
~ Chuck Missler

Is prayer your steering wheel
or your spare tire?

~ Corrie Ten Boom

Blessed are they who can laugh at themselves,
for they shall never cease to be amused.

~ unknown
Creativity
is a way
of living
Life
~ Madeleine L'Engle
Poetry takes something
that we know already
and turns it into something new.
~ T.S. Eliot

Start by doing what's necessary,
then what's possible,
and suddenly you are doing
the impossible.

~ St. Francis of Assisi

My best friend is a person who
will give me a book
I have not read.

~ Abraham Lincoln

You will ask me where I get my ideas...I cannot tell you with certainty; they come unsummoned...in the silence of the nights, early in the morning... tones that sound, and roar and storm about me until I have set them down in notes.

~ Ludwig Von Beethoven
This was one of my first Artist's Books, although I wouldn't have known to call it that. It was a photocopy book, an easy way for me to manipulate images at that time. Although I soon discovered that it needed some cutting to make the concept work. This was taken from the memory of a brief conversation with my grandmother (the same grandmother from the Grandma Book) Here is the text from this book, which runs along the bottom as each page is turned and one more piece of the little girl is cut out:

"I never knew he had a sister - until I noticed the photo in Grandma's album. When I asked her who it was, she said, 'My little girl.' Being still a little girl myself, I didn't know how to respond. I just turned the page and said how pretty she was I never knew how to ask him about her. She was locked up somewhere in who he was, why he was, how he was I didn't know what she had meant to him, and couldn't bring myself to ask."

I believe this conversation is where I learned to tread lightly in places of pain and loss. I learned that photographs could speak and tell stories, and that not all of them were happy moments. I learned to read the words that were not spoken, as well as the ones that were. This photograph kept showing up in my art for years.

I did eventually get to share this book with my grandmother before she died. It was in a pile of books that she asked to see. When she got to this, her eyes teared up, but she quickly controlled it, and moved on to the next book. She never mentioned it, and, just like the little girl I was who discovered the original photograph, I never pushed.

I did also finally share it with my father, who told me the whole story of polio and death and the way you handled these things in those days. I heard the answers to all my questions, even though some answers stayed locked inside my grandmother. You can read about Grandma Min in some poems in the poetry section. (Click here: link to Nursing Home Vision and Last Minute Adoption)



I Never Knew He Had A Sister

© 1987 Lisa Bowes LaLonde

photocopy with cut out sections

glue and book binding cloth

SORRY! This book is not for sale.

This is a One-of-a-Kind book in the artist's collection.

It is shared here for your enjoyment.