"Mail-art wardrobe malfunction" does not deter Lisa Iversen of Skybridge Studios

[Nancy Bell Scott]

Lisa sent me what she calls one of the strangest MA she has ever made: And I believe her! (The rest of the book appears in the first comment below. Don't miss it.) This Sarah Saunders story presented like a gift, with the ribbon around it, and its gentle, beautiful, mysterious qualities were immediately apparent. Then, as I read it, it seemed a bit disorienting and sad. Haunting. Finally, after some time, it made a kind of sense that I felt I was supplying with my own imagination, and it was touching. I even wondered if was autobiographical (it isn't). Lisa tells me that part of the reason for the disorientation would be that she accidentally skipped a page as she was writing, and had to go back and supply the die-cut as a sort of intermission, somewhat fixing what she called a "mail-art wardrobe malfunction." (Go ahead, laugh out loud, I did.) She put this book together in half an hour! It sounds like it wrote itself. Lisa herself feels a bit haunted by the experience.

We ended up having quite a discussion about her creation of this book from leftover old Sarah Saunders materials and about my run-the-gamut reactions to it. Way too much detail to include here, but between the two of us our discussion involved Henry James's "Turn of the Screw" (very scary); an old movie based on it ("The Innocents") (very scary); and the fact that one of us was once locked INSIDE our own house the morning after reading the James story (scariest of all).

It was after our back-and-forth discussion that I accidentally made a scary mail art (not usually my thing at all), and I thought it must be meant for Lisa, since we'd just got done scaring each other to death. But then I decided she was spooked enough and sent it to Svenja instead.

In the end, this book is a truly gorgeous, quietly mind-bending piece, and I see it as a kind of textual-pictorial tone poem. Rest of the book follows in comment below.

[Nancy Bell Scott]

I saw The INnocents the same night Lisa's book got here, or around then, by accident. Never heard of it, and it's in your top 5! I guess we all know who to go to for scary movie suggestions, because it does its job.

[David Stafford]

Cool...I love the narrative. Half an hour? Yikes...The Innocents is in my top five! One of the best, if not the best ghost movie ever. This is a top-notch effort...Zeus's head is exploding again....

 

[Svenja Wahl]

Wow, that's beautiful, I like it very much, especially the old photographs, telling a story before finally fading away .... great work, Lisa!! And Nancy: Good to know the background of the spooky one!

[Nancy Bell Scott]

It is a beautiful cover, isn't it? Took my breath away, and still does.

[Marie Wintzer]

Wow, great work again by Lisa. My favorite part has to be the cover, I love the textures and the stitching!

[prettylily]

What a visual delight & read.

[Nancy Bell Scott]