Flowers I Have Known
An Artist Book by Vicki Milewski
Flowers I Have Known and the Secrets They Have Shared With Me is a one of a kind artist book containing poems, art flowers with some done in cotton died with dried rose petals using a modified shibori method others made from words and an inner booklet of my choral composition Winter Song. All works in Flowers… come from poetic conversations I’ve had with some flowers men I loved gave to me about my journey toward understanding love.
The Cover
This photo shows the cover of this artist book, Flowers I Have Known and the Secrets They have Shared with Me. The three flowers are made from organic cotton, dyed with rose petals from three different roses that men I have loved gave to me. Text is integrated into each flower that has been printed on handmade paper, dyed again with those 3 roses. The different colors that occured from each dying batch seemed to match those 3 different relationships.
Winter Song Flower
This photo shows the center page with my "Winter Song Exploded Flower". Winter Song is a choral piece I wrote after my husband died which was performed years later after my parents had died. This flower is made from the score and speaks to me of the power grief has to tear us apart but also allow us to create.
A Poem Flower
This photo shows a page from the book with my poem Georgia O'keefe on the left side and a poem flower made from the same poem on the facing page. The flower has been sewn onto the page with naturally dyed thread and the grass is also naturally dyed thread. This poem is not about a man I loved but one of the reasons a relationship ended--because of my art. I gained strength at the time knowing that O'Keefe lived "alone in the desert" after her love died. The poem was inspied also by a poem Patti Smith wrote of the same title.
This photo shows a page from the book with my poem "If You're an Artist" on the left side and one of my mathematical art pieces
titled EOT on the facing page. The poem's title and some of its lines come from phrases some men have said to me, supposedly challenging me to say I'm not an artist. All these challenges did for me was give me strength in my knowledge of being an artist.
