Today's art book is another one of my absolute favorites: Collect Raindrops: The Seasons Gathered by Nikki McClure. Even leaving aside the fact (which, why would you leave it aside? it's an astonishing fact!) of the mind-boggling technical skill that goes into the making of these images--every one a single elaborate paper-cut (!)--there is just something so absolutely evocative and dreamy about the world McClure creates.
In fact, if I have any complaint about this book at all, it's that it can, if you're in a certain mood, make you a little bit dissatisfied with your life. These are the kinds of images that make you want to shrink yourself down and crawl inside the world of the artist's imagination and live there. A wonderful mostly rural existence filled with warmth and friends and meaningful work; forgiveness and communion with nature; big skies and babies and pies.
But maybe, if we're lucky, McClure's work can inspire us to live with more grace and presence here in the real world. I really did once sit in a bikini on a rock overlooking a gorgeous lake when I was hugely pregnant, and only now, looking through this book again for the umpteenth million time, did I realize that maybe on some level that idea had been sparked by art:
Last, because I cannot resist a bit of shameless self-promotion from time to time, I must just mention that McClure is also featured in an awesome book I recently edited, Paper Cutting: Contemporary Artists, Timeless Craft, as well as in a number of gift and stationary paper products published by my work.
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