We invite you to the official opening of our new exhibition, Textus-Texts-Textiles: Fabric Bookworks by Lise Melhorn-Boe, at W.D. Jordan Rare Books and Special Collections, Queen’s University Library, on Friday, May 27, 2022, 1:00-2:00 pm

Textus-Texts-Textiles explores the relationship between texts and textiles, through a feminist lens, via the fabric bookworks of Kingston artist, Lise Melhorn-Boe, supplemented by books as cultural texts and technological artifacts from the collections of W. D. Jordan Rare Books and Special Collections at Queen’s University Library. The exhibition runs from May 6 to September 9, 2022.

The sewn bookworks of Lise Melhorn-Boe encapsulate the relationship between tangible objects and the written word through the medium of book art.  The bookworks featured in this exhibition were inspired by the poetry of Lorna Crozier, Terry Ann Carter, Hazel Hall, Alice Moore Dunbar-Nelson, Diane Dawber, Alexandra Cussons, and Bronwen Wallace. In imagining and crafting material representations of feminist poetry, Melhorn-Boe reminds us that handmade books, in their plethora of forms, are vessels of humanized content. 

The exhibition was co-curated by Brendan Edwards, Curator of Rare Books and Special Collections at Queen’s University Library, and Ella Heiss, undergraduate student in HIST212 (Experiential Learning in Historical Perspectives).