Story Carrier, the Party

A Book Launch That Became an Art Installation

Who says a book can only come to life as a collection of pages of text, held in place by a cover. Who says a story must be contained in chapters, comprised of paragraphs or lines of elegantly organized text. Why can’t a story transcend the page, by singing out, painting a picture, or gesturing to readers, inviting them into the author’s or narrator’s experience. In writing my memoir, Story Carrier: A Collection of Tales of the Disappeared, I worked very hard to produce visual descriptions of places and people in order to set the tone and create an external landscape that mirrored my interior life, adding both context and layers of texture to my story. So, a few weeks after the book release, when I decided to invite family and friends to a celebration, I decided to use art to mirror the stories captured in my book, showing the way life imitates art.

Writer Maria Popova observes that “all creative work — be it music or mathematics, poetry or physics, anything we might call art — is a hand outstretched in the dark, reaching not for visibility but for the light that lives between us. Reaching for connection.” Connection is precisely what I sought as I wrote my memoir: I wanted to tell the world a tale that illustrates how I carried stories across generations, handed down to me from my ancestors, often through my great grandmother, and my mother. I wanted to show how stories existed in my life as a form of creative energy, living deep in my DNA cells. I wanted to show how even those stories that had not been articulated were held in my body until they burst forth into my life. Often, they emerged from my soul in surprisingly dramatic and artistic ways. This was true for stories I had heard as well as those that had been hidden from me. The book was a gesture, an invitation to readers to follow my process of allowing the stories to discover me and providing the space for them to unfold in my life. I wanted the party to be an invitation to my readers and guests to step into the storied world I hope my book became for them. So, I decided to turn my celebration into a sensory experience that invited guests to see, feel, hear and taste the physical properties of story.

In the weeks leading up to the launch, I reached out to artists, writers, musicians, and other talented friends and they literally and metaphorically reached back in response offering to help. A few of us got together to develop the party’s vision and setting, a Book Forest, and I invited some to create a piece of art that turned the venue, a huge lobby of my church into a woodsy destination, filled with pieces of book art.

Welcoming guests into the setting was this beautiful poster (see picture below) created by a young woman, Samantha Wilson, whose day job is as a language arts teacher at an area middle school. Sammy helped me flesh out the vision for the party; then, she designed the printed the poster, and built the display holding it, using an old ladder, flowers, and greenery.

Other friends helped decorate the space, using old classic books that mirrored my love of writing and the environment, especially my lifelong attachment to trees. Then, we completely transformed the space by creating a hanging display using hundreds of pages from old books.

My husband spent hours a day for a full month helping me string together book pages that we suspended from the ceiling, across the entire room, creating a tactile, interactive experience for party guests who sat among the pages. Several brave friends climbed ladders to help hang the pages around the room.

Another important contribution to the event was the music, provided by area musician, Steve Wilson, a member of the band, The Implication, who played original compositions on his acoustic guitar. Historically, music is valued as an expressive art that brings together a group of people, and it served as a unifying element for those attending the book launch who did not know one another.  Steve’s music provided an inviting and gentle sound that framed the event by setting a magical tone.  

Another artist and friend, Lorraine Brandt, a card maker by profession, designed and created bookmarks with quotes reflecting my love of story for guests who attended the party. Here, they are spread out on one of the tables, covered with long runners made by Samanta Wilson out of old book pages. You can find Lorraine’s cards at lorelcards.com

Several guests who attended the party brought flowers. The use of flowers to bestow honor on an event is an historic practice. In ancient times, flowers were often associated with gods and religious ceremonies. Author, Mary Porter Kerns writes of our dependance on them as we evolved as a species. “…the flowers were our maps, our direction signs for our very life. Now the flowers speak to our souls. They lead us back to ourselves, to our hearts.” Mary’s book, The Flowers Are Speaking: The Million Year Love Story Between Humans and Flowers, will be released soon.

Another friend, Sharon Wilson, also an author and retired creative writing teacher, spent weeks making this beautiful tree with limbs we gathered from the forest near my house and leaves she made out of old book pages. She added tiny white lights to the limbs to enhance the shape of the tree. Sharon’s interpretation of story, as a tree, helped illustrate the concept that story is a living entity. Her offering contributed to the ritual of making and giving art, as a form of nurturing a sense of communal belonging and helped to illustrate my belief that stories are held by everything that surrounds us. The sky, the wind, the trees.

Longtime family friend, Dave Sieglitz, also an artist, poet, and musician created this interesting image, a photograph of me reading the very pages of the book that appear in the foreground of the picture. Dave’s artful arrangement not only framed the reading, but it is also an illustration that art is more than a form of individual expression; it is a communal activity that can educate, inspire, and reinforce social bonds within a community.

As you can see by the pictures of the celebration, several creative people were involved in making this a wonderful culminating experience for my book. The art they created became a visual expression of my goal in writing the book: to tell my story and invite others to enter into the transformational process of making storied art. By creating a sensory representation of the story, I hope guests were encouraged to explore their own life experiences and, most importantly, to see how art can be used to frame an experience.  

I am grateful for those whose hands and hearts helped me extend a call to story carriers by creating a gentle creative spirit that was present with us as we celebrated story.  

Please order my memoir, Story Carrier: A Collection of Tales of the Disappeared.