Books on Fire consists of five large books wrapped in hand-dyed linen fabric. The fabric dyes were based on the colors of the air quality index in California during the recent wildfires--which parallelled a time of social unrest. The artwork is concerned with means of preserving and handing down knowledge during times of destruction, whether that upheaval is from cultural turmoil or natural disasters. The books themselves, dating from between 1904 and 1973, come from my grandfather’s library, and the titles include “Federal Indian Law,” “Indian Affairs Laws and Treaties,” and “Law and the American Indian.”

Books on Ice is a set of 5 books from our family’s library about major figures in the history of Marxism, socialism, and communism: Friedrich Engels, Karl Marx, Joseph Stalin, Mao Zedong, and Fidel Castro. The books are covered in dyed linen with abbreviated book titles machine-embroidered on the book spines. The patterns were created through a slow ice-dyeing process, in which dyes seep through melting ice into the fabric underneath.