Cahier d’Histoire Naturelle by Bessie Smith Moulton

I discovered an old (turn of the century?) French notebook in an antique shop. Since I couldn’t read most of the beautiful handwriting it became a lovely textural pattern; the illustrations of scientific diagrams made exceptional objects of modern art. I copied a number of the pages onto acetate and painted in the drawings. Every four pages are separated by the grid paper of the original notebook allowing the illustrations and the handwriting to interact. It can be viewed in a number of ways, single pages, a montage of images and texture of each section of four pages but I also like the shadows that each page creates when lifted off the page.