My new work, Specimens, is one of three pieces on show at the Minnesota Center for Book Arts as part of the 2016 Jerome Foundation Book Arts Fellowship. The opening for the exhibition is on November 11th, starting at 6 PM. The pages will be displayed in sandwiched plexiglass frames, to allow light to pass through and permit the audience to see them floating in space – very much the way the paper looks and feels when handled. Here’s my artist statement from the exhibition: Specimens is the first of its kind: a book created with a new bio-paper medium made entirely from bacterial cellulose. Its pages were once alive. The quality of this new paper, which I developed over the past seven years, is its unparalleled strength and transparency. Each sheet is grown in a vat and harvested after several weeks. After processing, many layers – five or more – are laid on top of one another with the text block carefully placed within. Then the entire stack is pressed. The act of pressing …