Button by Lorna Crozier, a fabric bookwork by Lise Melhorn-Boe
Channel: Queen's University Library
Date: 2022-05-03

Featured in the exhibition, Textus-Texts-Textiles: fabric bookworks by Lise Melhorn-Boe, at W.D. Jordan Rare Books and Special Collections, Queen’s University Library, 6 May – 9 September 2022. 

Button by Lorna Crozier is the first book Melhorn-Boe made in this collection. Crozier and Melhorn-Boe met in winter of 2015 at the Kingston WritersFest. Crozier suggested Melhorn-Boe experiment with her poems in her book The Book of Marvels: A Compendium of Everyday Things. From there, Melhorn-Boe found inspiration in Crozier's poems on sewing as Melhorn-Boe has been a seamstress for most of her life. All the buttons utilized have significant meanings to Melhorn-Boe as they all come from important women in life. Unlike the solipsistic character of the button in Crozier’s poem, Melhorn-Boe has infused this work with the experience of others, emitting objectivity and selflessness.  

Video by Brendan Edwards and Ella Heiss; edited by Ella Heiss, 2022.