To me, bookmarks are magic! They mark the place where the world of the story intersects the world in which we live, the place where the world of words meets the world of the senses. To me, this place is marvelous and magical and very, very cool. This is what I get passionate about. The magic place should be honored, celebrated, made a focus of attention.

These Jewelmark bookmarks are greatly varied in form and style; each is a unique work of art, with a character of its own. Some are simpler and more serviceable for daily use, some are lavish and better suited for use with books of special significance: favorite reference books, the family Bible, a classic volume of historic significance. Some styles are suitable to serve also as jewelry for the reader as well as for the book.

Starting with a wired gauze ribbon, I doubled it and sewed the lengths together so that the design from one side shows mistily through to the other, and I used a wandering crewel-stitch to secure the pieces together. To further the impression of heavy mists described in the story, I made lots of feathery structures with tiny translucent white seed beads and gold, garnet, & translucent-gold beads. One of the things I liked most about the story that inspired the piece was the way it had of making alien things seem oddly familiar. So, hidden among the ‘mists’ are a lot of odd little things: round and faceted agates, freshwater pearls, fish, flower, insect, and bird beads of various sorts.

Laramie Sasseville

I’ve been a big fan of Dora Goss from way back. I just loved her stories in “The Forest of Forgetting”. Her work just seemed to have an affinity to my dioramas. As soon as I heard she had a story in Interfictions 2 I signed on to do a piece based on it, sight unseen. I couldn’t have picked better if I had tried! The wonderful Jules Verne-esque story (from the other point of view) worked perfectly with the Victorian imagery I use. I also liked the sense of exploration and discovery that you find in period magazines and in fact used some for the foreground and background of the box. I decided to create a scene that didn’t show the Martians as they are alien. Instead, I found an old hero (from a 1901 volume of the London Illustrated News) and put him in the sky as the Empress dreams her new word. I hope the gentleman pictured would be pleased.

Connie Toebe

I’m a doll artist blending natural and man-made materials to create mythic creatures. I loved this story and the way that making a piece of art for it stretched my boundaries (and hurt my brain! ouch). Making the Empress was both very fun and very challenging. I’m fascinated with seeing the ordinary as alien and the alien as ordinary in my art and this piece is a reflection of that as well as an illustration of a most excellent and thoroughly enjoyable story told from an alien point of view.

C. Jane Washburn