Fly away book #9 handmade artist book — Melissa Lazuka Photographs

I recently finished book 9 in my fly away series of 25 unique handmade artist books. This book went to a dear friend in California.

Each book contains this poem from Alice in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll that I type onto antique paper with my 1930’s Underwood Standard Portable Typewriter;

"In a Wonderland they lie,

Dreaming as the days go by,

Dreaming as the summers die;

Ever drifting down the stream,

Lingering in the golden gleam -

Life, what is it, but a Dream?"

- Lewis Carroll

ARTIST STATEMENT, fly away

There is a very short period of time that everyone is a child, and only so many summers we can experience as a child, before they "die", and we must become adults. In this series, I focus on the fleetingness of time, and the dream like world my daughter takes me to, as she escapes into her imagination in the outside world of our home, the Ohio landscape. Through multiple exposures and a technique called freelensing in which I hold my broken film lenses, detached from the camera, I have tried to create the world which she imagines and inhabits. One in which time is irrelevant and where fairies do exist, and she is Queen of the Butterflies. It is an escape to wonderland, a dream world she flies away to, and always comes back.

You can read Douglas Stockdale’s lovely review of it here

I am working on book 10 if you are interested in purchasing one!

I sell all of my artist books here!