One of the first things I made after college, and how this idea began. I interned for a bookbinding class in 1997 and sewed my first book, a tiny little thing which sat empty for a year. When I finally started to draw something on the first page, I made a mistake and wanted something to cover it up. My dad had given me an envelope full of old letters and loose postage stamps a few years prior. Flipping through them was like leafing through a book — I loved the paper, the handwriting, and all the marks of their passage. Looking at my now ruined first page, I realized one of those postage stamps would be just the right size.
I picked one of my favorites – a Canadian stamp featuring a map of the world – and stuck it smack in the center of the page. It suited the little book, and I chose a tiny brown castle for page two. This one, I felt, needed a little more space on the right so I extended the horizon. An airmail on page three needed sky. By page five, I thought I might be onto something. There was a story unfolding here, about a traveler, and I waited to choose each stamp until I had completed the previous scene. It ended up back where it began, in Canada, with two people taking a walk. And fades out with a washy painting of a bridge, reminiscent of the start…
