Since settling in Maine in 1998, Abbie Read has been creating extraordinary art—mixed-media wall pieces, collages, artist books, prints, watercolors, and more—from her ARTgarden studio on Appleton Ridge. Among her most celebrated works are assemblages that incorporate “retired” books. She also works with words.
Via email, Read answered questions that draw from this issue’s theme description. (Her answers have been very lightly edited.)
CL: What compels you to integrate words and books into your art? When did you start doing this?
AR: Integrating words and integrating books into my art are two different things for me. Books are mostly used as appealing cast-off materials where words are used to complement imagery (in the case of the altered books) and as visual texture on a page.
I have made artist books off and on for quite a long time now. Sometimes the books have words that propel a narrative of some sort; sometimes they are a collection of just images, because words are not always needed. I haven’t made a book recently with a narrative of any kind.
Abbie Read, Black Throated Green, watercolor and ink on retired book, 10 x 14.25 in., 2009 (all photos courtesy of the artist except where noted).
When I made the altered books included in this article, the book was the armature: I simply opened them up and began to work on top of them. The opened book was, of course, significant, in that this is where we can find information. At the time, I was collaborating with poet Jonathan Skinner as part of the 2010 Belfast Poetry Festival. He was writing about warblers, and I used field guides to inspire my imagery and then included his words.
Abbie Read, Library, mixed media on panel, 7.5 x 40 ft., 2010–17 (photo: Lynn Karlin).
Not long after that, I began a large, ongoing project that incorporated my own altered books, deconstructed books, found objects, artist-made boxes, and decorative papers into a wall piece I called Library (it was included in the 2013 Portland Museum of Art Biennial and in the American Embassy in Qatar in 2016). That project continued for years, ultimately reaching a length of 40 feet by 7.5 feet high.
Abbie Read, detail from Library, 7.5 x 40 ft., 2010–17 (photo: Lynn Karlin).
Among other thoughts about libraries and their many layers, I was thinking at that time of how libraries are such gold mines and might not ultimately be needed in the future because of the internet. Wrong! They are essential community spaces where books are treasured objects, not artifacts.
My father was an English teacher; I grew up surrounded by books, and I have always read a lot. Incorporating books into my art sometimes feels like a kind of tribute to him and the way I was raised. I also love holding a book to read it. (I have never used a Kindle, preferring the physical interaction with an actual book.) Books are meaningful to me in that way.
Abbie Read, Le Tour de la France (Sampler #10), book cover and linen thread, 18 x 15 in., 2016.
CL: How did the book cover pieces come about? Where did you get the covers? What was the process for assembling them and wrapping them with linen thread?
AR: When I was deconstructing books to use in Library (2010 to about 2017), I was already beginning to wrap some of the covers with linen thread, adding the threads as an additional layer to create more dimensionality and visual interest. This process evolved quite naturally into using just the covers, cutting them into strips and rearranging the parts into an overall composition.
In order to bind them together into the quilt-like hanging form, I wrap them in different ways and use the blanket stitch, as well as various knots to be able to “stitch” the individual covers together into the piece, much like patching together a crazy quilt. I don’t poke holes in them to bind them together, so there’s a lot of thread involved!
Abbie Read, Red Field (The American College Dictionary), book covers and linen thread, 38 x 24 in., 2018, Cynthia Winings Gallery (photo: Carl Little).
As to where the book covers come from, they are collected from many sources: my father’s former library, used book stores, antique stores, and other people. I have also gotten quite a few from libraries, which are always looking to rid themselves of excess books. One time a librarian from another state sent me a couple of boxes of covers to use! That was a bonus.
Abbie Read, The Devil’s Doings, book covers and linen thread, 63 x 42 in., 2018.
CL: How do you see the verbal and the visual working together? What do you seek to achieve by combining them?
AR: Words appear in my work from time to time not because they are meant to stand out as meaningful content or enhance the imagery, but because they are integral to the materials I use: book covers. Words and titles are embedded from the start; I see them as visual texture as much as reference to their past lives as books.
An exception to this is a piece I made in about 2012, which was a large, layered and sewn paper piece on which I shared stories I had solicited from friends and family about a time in their lives when they felt particularly lucky to have survived an accident that could have resulted in very different outcomes. I called that piece Lucky Quilt.
Abbie Read, Lucky Quilt, ink, collage, and thread on nautical charts, 80 x 89 in., 2012.
I created Lucky Quilt in response to an accident in which I was injured and lucky to have survived. As I was healing, I kept thinking about how lucky I was to have survived, not how unlucky I was to have been in the wrong place at the wrong time. I asked friends and family members to tell me a story in which they had been in a similar circumstance, and I received many stories.
Abbie Read, detail from Lucky Quilt, ink, collage, and thread on nautical charts, 80 x 89 in., 2012.
I then created a background from charts of Penobscot Bay, which featured in the accident (a plane crash), and wrote these stories on top using different handwriting to symbolize the different voices telling their stories. I also incorporated quotes from a book I had about luck.
I felt it had to be in the form of a quilt, a symbol of home, comfort, and safety. Blue, referencing the color of the sky and sea, which surrounded us in the aftermath of the accident, was my color of choice for the writing, the thread I used, and many small details. The words are everything, personally profound, and imagery minimal; the writing becomes the image as well as the content.
CL: Do you think the efficacy of words enhances the efficacy of an image?
AR: Complicated question! I don’t use words to enhance an image as I generally work in an abstract way, balancing and manipulating color, shape, line, contrast, and texture, and typically, the words are more textural than textual. I am very much driven by materials, particularly paper, and these materials, whether just a book cover or the entire inside spread of a book, often have the words already embedded in them, and those materials are chosen because of the personal associations on the part of the viewer that might be gleaned from the words or the titles.
Abbie Read, detail from The Old Wives’ Tale, book covers and linen thread, 35 x 24 in., 2018 (photo: Carl Little).
Abbie Read, The Old Wives’ Tale, book covers and linen thread, 35 x 24 in., 2018 (photo: Carl Little).
CL: How has this verbal/visual practice evolved?
AR: Quite seamlessly, as I don’t use words to drive any kind of messaging in my work. The words/print/titles are generally there because they are part of the materials I like to work with. Viewers do find personal references and meaning, especially in the titles on the book covers. I’ve done commissions using books with specific titles that the individual finds meaningful in their personal history.
CL: Do you have plans for further work along these lines?
AR: I love these pieces and enjoyed creating them. Right now, I am painting and making prints on paper from which I am constructing three-dimensional objects; no words are involved. But I love working with paper, and book covers are a kind of paper, and they are a meaningful material for me so I am sure I will return to working with them. I need to collect a whole bunch more. It takes a lot of them to have a good choice of the right colors, sizes, and titles.
More work by Abbie Read can be found on her website. Read is also part of the recently created Midcoast Maine Book Arts collaborative; she curated a show of their work, “Botany Bound,” for the Heart of Ellsworth last summer. She is a guest artist at Local Color Gallery in Belfast (through 18 January 2026), and shows at Triangle Gallery in Rockland.
Image at top: Abbie Read, Wilsonian Canadensis, watercolor and ink on retired book, 7.5 x 9.5 in., 2009.