My grandmother made scrapbooks from brown paper bags. We call this ‘upcycling’ today. Treasure conjured from colorful scraps, odds and ends, images collated. Repurposed. Eye candy. A
MUSTER OF PRIDE / JULIE MARTIN
Her chosen images imprinted on my imagination. Swirling in an array of memory: colors, empty spaces, bond of glue on paper, the pages fan open in a dazzling display.
Poetry
Omnivorous, her fingers would strut, foraging through piles of ephemera: greeting cards, magazines, calendars, seeking to satisfy requirements for whimsy, novelty and color. Keen eyes focused, predatory scissors poised, she quickly gleaned prints of domestic bliss, clipping pictures of rosy cheeked children nourished on soup and glistening towers of jewel toned jello. I grew up between the pages of her scrapbook, my first book. A thousand eyes stared back at me as I learned by heart the incantation for ingenuity how to make something from nothing. 55
