Artist Member
Bower Birds
Tunnel book
6 h x 7” w
Moby Dick
Wooden cover, Secret Belgian Binding
10 h x 18” w
Mice and Men
Accordion book, cut paper
6 h x 72” w
Mary Gillis
I am a retired CPA/Senior Tax Manager, and a visual artist. As an undergraduate I became interested in photography and used a fully manual 35mm camera for about thirty years. While I did try to pay attention to composition in my photographs I never thought of this activity as doing ‘art.’
In my late twenties I began making quilts. Since I had made most of my own clothes prior to this, I taught myself from a book. I did use traditional block designs, but used these only as guidelines. The attraction of making quilts began with my interest in geometry, but led to stretching boundaries more and more. A teacher changed my life. Kathy Weinheimer, a Bridgewater MA quilt artist, taught color theory and design as they apply to textiles. She pushed me to take the endeavor more seriously and she encouraged my efforts. Also, the concepts I absorbed in Maggie Fitzpatrick’s class at the Museum School, a course in two-dimensional design, inform almost everything I do. A final project in Maggie’s color theory course led to my desire to learn how to make a book, as I had done eight small paintings illustrating the story of Moby Dick.
At Boston University I did the artist book class with Lynne Allen. Being summer semester we made fourteen books in six weeks and my final project was accepted to a gallery exhibit. I’ve been an avid reader since childhood; in high school and college I worked as a stack page in the Boston Public Library. I love making books—mostly trying to come up with a structure that connects with the text.
ARTIST’S STATEMENT
My artwork connects my interest in visual design with communicating an idea. Sometimes the graphic aspect is dominant, at other times the message takes precedence. I enjoy making artist books, photography and printmaking. Sometimes I make a book because I’m interested in the structure. Other times I want to honor a writer whose work I admire. And some books become political statements.
A tunnel book seemed to be a natural for the ‘Bower Birds’ piece. I have been interested in animal intelligence, especially the ones who build things: birds’ nests, beaver dams, termite mounds, etc. The male bower bird creates a structure to attract the female. Here we see her checking his effort.
Some people think I’m obsessive about Melville’s ‘Moby Dick.’ I’ve read it about five times, first in an abridged version as a kid, later on the full 600 or so pages. And attended the marathon reading at the New Bedford Whaling Museum. The small acrylic gouache paintings were done in a color theory class—the assignment being to illustrate a story but be as abstract as possible. Getting the idea across with color. The book has wooden covers in the shape of a coffin, which is an important symbol in the book. It is highly-abridged: one chapter title and one sentence to go along with each of the eight paintings.
In 2002, John Updike wrote a poem after he heard on the news that the mouse genome and the human genome are 99% the same. His poem is a send-up of the poem ‘To a Mouse’ written in 1785 by Robert Burns, and is written in the same Scottish dialect. I laugh every time I read the Updike poem. My book begins with the Burns, ends with the Updike—with strands of DNA connecting the two.