In the wake of the Eaton Fire, which leveled my entire neighborhood, I made a pop-up book wherein objects I found in the rubble literally rise from the rubble.
Merrill Feitell
Award-winning author and purveyor of story-building, renovation, and design
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Publication: “Left on Harriet” in Places Journal
Belatedly barking about my short essay and pics that appeared in the extremely cool journal Places, along with work by Myriam Gurba, Moriah Ulinskas, and Carolyn Castaño. More than 100 days since the Eaton Fire, and though they’ve started clearing properties, much of the mess of it persists on the ground and on my daily to-do list. https://placesjournal.org/article/photographs-from-altadena-after-the-eaton-fire
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Pop-Up in Progress
In these pop-up book prototypes, objects I found in the ashes of the Eaton Fire literally rise from the ashes.
Precious Things, 2025
Handmade, interactive, pop-up artist book with inserts, custom pocket, and N-95 mask.
Early versions: Perfect bound: 5.75” x 5.75” x 1.75”. Unbound star book: ~6.25″ x 5.5″
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Honors: Artist Residency In Sweden
With a lifelong interest in both photography and book arts, I began integrating images and form-play into my written work to explore the most effective means for telling a particular story. I’ve always been inclined to work with fragments and the cumulative effects of assembling them.
Granted a residency in Bjorko, Sweden for a month of writing and book arts in the company of several other wildfire survivors. You can view the Zoom open studio tour at https://bjorkokonstnod.se/luciddreams @losangeleswildfiresurvivors @bkn.bjorko.konstnod #makinstuffinsweden #bookarts
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Honors: Essay Recognition
I’m so happy to discover that my essay “Personal Protective Equipment” from Switchyard Magazine was included in the Memoir Monday Round-Up, “a weekly curation of the best personal essays from around the web” curated by Sari Botton. Happy to be included with so many great writers! You can subscribe to Memoir Land at https://substack.com/@memoirland Thanks, @switchyardtulsa, @tgenoways, @maryanne_andrei, @saribotton!
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Public Event: Lit Fest in the Dena
Happy to be a part of Lit Fest in the Dena! The famous Altadena mortuary that was previously the site of Lit Fest survived the Eaton Fire, but it has been the staging area for the Army Corps of Engineers so this year’s events take place in Pasadena. So there we were, the writing community rising from the ashes.
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Public Event: Neighborhood Narrative Workshop: LitFest in the Dena 2024
LitFest in the Dena! Join us Sunday 5/5 at 2pm in the Cloister Garden at Mountain View Mausoleum, 2300 N. Marengo Ave., Altadena, CA
#litfest #litfestinthedena #writersinmausoleums #altadena #beautifulaltadena #losangeleswriters
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Public Event: Reading + Publication Party
Writers’ Program Faculty Reading + Publication Party at the Skirball Center. Wednesday 6/7/2023 at 7pm. FREE but you have to register for the event here:
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Vanishing Point: A Möbius Atlas -Early Editions
Vanishing Point: A Möbius Atlas
Handmade book in a box. Mixed-media Möbius book with tab and magnetic fastening; reads on both sides and in both directions.
Written work about driving back and forth across the country in form of a möbius strip, the form echoing the essay’s elliptical content.
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Handmade Book in a Box (with a rock)
Things to Do with a Rock the Shape of Your Ear
handmade book in a box with a rock
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Publication: Text, Image, Multimedia Narratives & Creative Process
Writing Afterimage: Show Versus Tell and the Multimedia Narrative
My essay on the use of text and image in memoir was published by the Los Angeles Review of Books!
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Public Event: Group Show
Shhh!: 20 Artists on Changes in Culture & Democracy, Pasadena Hastings Branch Library
Includes my handmade book, Concepts in Science: A Beginning Vocabulary for the Science of a Mid-Life Crisis
Woody O’ Toole Untitled 44”x 16”x10
PRESS RELEASE
“Shhh!”
September 9-September 30, 2018
Opening September 9th, 1:30-4:30 PM
All of our political, social and cultural institutions are under pressure to change, to be replaced, or to disappear. Libraries are no exception. Budgets are being cut. Hi-tech corporations would like to privatize them. Hard cover books are slowly but surely being replaced with ebooks.
Librarians, once the secular high priests and priestesses who treated books as sacred, have been demoted and forced to throw books in their dumpsters.
For the month of September on display at the Pasadena Hastings Branch Library, the JJU collective has curated over 30 artists, some internationally known, who will explore the consequences of books as being obsolete, reduced to base material, no different than clay.
Pasadena Hastings Branch Library
3325 E Orange Grove Blvd, Pasadena, CA
626-744-7262
ww5.cityofpasadena.net/library/libraries/hastings-branch-library/
