About the Commission:

This tribute book was created for Lee Everding and commissioned by Redline Contemporary Art Center in Denver, Colorado as part of their annual award presentation.  Ms. Everding served on the board at Redline and, among many, many other leadership positions, also served at Iliff School of Theology, Rocky Mountain Planned Parenthood, the American Humane Association, Colorado Academy, and the Women’s Foundation of Colorado.  Ms. Everding was also co-founder of the Abrahamic Initiative at St. John’s Cathedral and founder of the Denver Ecelectics.  The book was designed to incorporate a multitude of tributes from appreciative community members, family and friends, and was stylized particularly for Ms. Everding’s tastes and interests.  The specially-created dragonfly mounted to the peaked lid gives a nod to the logo of the Denver Eclectics.  

About the Book and How It Works:

The book is built as a six-sided tower with a lid.  With the lid removed, each of the six sides of the book can fold down, revealing two stacks of connected pages.  When the ribbon fastener is pulled back, the pages to begin to unfold.  Two spreads of pages folds out from each wall, with text visible on both sides, so that 60 panels of tributes are included.

About the Materials and Processes: 

The walls of the book are constructed from three layers of book board covered in black unryu paper.  A layer of tinted Tyvek connects the walls to the towers, and connects the panels to the walls and to each other.  The exterior walls are held upright by button-and-string closures at each angle with a decorative wide sage green ribbon strip on each walls.  Satin leaf ribbon twines up two of the walls.  The dragonfly on the peaked lid has wings cut from mango paper; its body is hand-shaped from banana paper and sewn to the lid with black embroidery thread.

As each wall is tipped down, two folded stacks of panels are hinged to each other with Tyvek, such that they form an extended line of tributes when unfolded. The panels are covered with a variety of papers including unryu, mango and banana papers; they are held in place by sage green grosgrain ribbon “straps” attached to each side of the upright wall.  Velcro attaches the straps to each other.

The font used for the tributes and colophon is Optima; the tributes are laser printed onto ivory linen cover-weight paper.