A Better Life
New York: Béatrice Coron, 2014. Paperback. Number 2 of 6 copies. This poignant yet also exuberant book is a collaboration by well known book artist Béatrice Coron with painter, Laura James, and poet, Tiffany Osedra Miller. Coron describes her book work: "For more than 20 years I have been exploring visual storytelling in artist books, paper cutting and public art. Collecting memories from individuals and communities, I stage narrative allegories in silhouette to create a dialogue with the viewer in playful fantasies. These visual chronicles record archetypal stories that transcend time and space. I have been fascinated by the relation of people to their space and the sense of belonging. Using papercutting where everything is cut from a single piece of Tyvek, the profusion of individual stories makes a coherent whole world." [From her website]. In this accordion book, Coron’s evocative papercuts are married to Laura James’s colorful painted pages, with Miller’s poignant poem of hopes for a better future handwritten across the pages in black ink. Miller’s poem addresses the hopes, hardships, and disappointments of immigrant families during their journey to new lands. Coron and James’s illustrations of a barren land, a dying grandmother, a lone rooster, and a severed hand in the desert paint a disturbing backdrop for this quest to a better life. The covers are black with a white and red title label to the front and colophon on rear cover. The backs of the pages are painted gold. Hand-cut and painted on Arches paper with hand-written text. Housed in a yellow cloth covered book case. Size: 66 x 6 inches when open. 5 x 5.5 inches when closed. Unpaginated [10 pages] ARTB/081921. Fine. More