Continental Divide: 12 years later

In 2004, in the midst of a fairly divisive American Presidential election, I made this fiber art book.

Crane book -- Continental Divide open

This is one set of pages, embroidered in red and blue cotton thread on cotton and linen ground, with fore-edges tasseled in cotton thread and glass beads.

Divide page for blog

This is the original poem I wrote and embroidered into the fiber pages:

From here I cannot see two oceans:

Standing astride this ridge, one foot

Touching sunset – the other, night.

On each side, cool winds taste the same.

From here I see no difference between

Factory or farm, trailer or mansion,

No hint of hand or ideology behind

The lights that in distant valleys bloom.

Thrumming roads, the tight hives of towns,

Diamond cities spilled across the dark –

All nerves flooded by two signals,

Twin prayers voiced and un-uttered.

From here I see only the glorious

Storm,  

And I recall how Church

Painted Cotopaxi (in the shadow

Of Civil War.)

This book is now in the special collections library of a major American Ivy-League university.

Crane book -- Continental Divide new bind back

I’m making a book for the 2016 Elections right now. It makes ‘Continental Divide’ seem genteel. Stay tuned.