Title: Sowing seeds
Description: This collection supports and promotes awareness to the important mission and framework of the Al-Mutanabbi Street Starts Here Coalition's focus on the lasting power of the written word and the arts in support of the free expression of ideas, the preservation of shared cultural spaces, and the importance of responding to attacks, both overt and subtle, on artists, writers, and academics working under oppressive regimes or in zones of conflict, despite the destruction of that literary/cultural content.

"An artist previously, I have taken a 20-year break from artwork to follow a career as a psychoanalytic psychotherapist. Returning to art, I have become interested in the making of book art, and enrolled in a course last year to learn various techniques. Although having completed a few books, Sowing seeds is my first to be shown publicly. The al-Mutanabbi Street Project has not only touched me emotionally, it has served as part of my own personal renaissance: it is my impression that books serve as threads in life, both for in cultures and individuals"--Artist's statement from the Book Arts at the Centre for Fine Print Research, UK website.

Dr. Laurie Jo Wright, 1975-1991: Artist, agent Anatol Orient Gallery, London. Work and exhibitions both in UK and abroad. Work primarily prints and ceramic installations; 1991-2012: MA/PhD in Psychoanalytic Studies; clinical training; work as psychoanalytic psychotherapist; 2012- current: working on a series of book(art) projects exploring analytic thinking and imagery. Completed to date: Sowing seeds, and Redrawing the analytic dialogue. Work in progress: Self/Identity - man, woman, child; Working with Jane Austen, separate but related.
Subjects: Violence, Pictorial works, Booksellers and bookselling, Bombings, Iraq War, 2003-2011, Protest movements, Books and reading in art, Intellectual life, Social conditions, Censorship, Terrorism in art, In art, War and civilization, Vehicle bombs, Visual literature, Specimens, Cultural property, Destruction and pillage, Thread, English Collage, Artists' books, Al-Mutanabbi Street Coalition
Places: Iraq, Baghdad, England, London
People: Laurie Jo Wright
Time periods: 21st century