In the tradition of William Blake’s illuminated manuscripts, Bird Ladder Sky Snake is a surreal, collaborative collection of dreams and a testament to artistic friendship.
For years, Rikki Ducornet and Fowzia Karimi have been exchanging dreams: one records her dreams as prose poems or stories, and the other illustrates them. The result is Bird Ladder Sky Snake, a book that resists categorization just as surely as our dreams resist our attempts at analysis or instruction: it is a memoir, an art book, a dream journal, a folk narrative, and can be flipped and read in two directions. Read one way, the dreamer is Karimi, with illustrations by Ducornet; the other, the dreamer is Ducornet, with illustrations by Karimi. ‘Dreams,’ Karimi writes, ‘are the source and substance of myth, prophecy, art, and invention; they have always shaped our lives.’ Bird Ladder Sky Snake is an invitation to dream alongside two prolific artists, to follow their muse, and to slip between realms of existence.
For years, Rikki Ducornet and Fowzia Karimi have been exchanging dreams: one records her dreams as prose poems or stories, and the other illustrates them. The result is Bird Ladder Sky Snake, a book that resists categorization just as surely as our dreams resist our attempts at analysis or instruction: it is a memoir, an art book, a dream journal, a folk narrative, and can be flipped and read in two directions. Read one way, the dreamer is Karimi, with illustrations by Ducornet; the other, the dreamer is Ducornet, with illustrations by Karimi. ‘Dreams,’ Karimi writes, ‘are the source and substance of myth, prophecy, art, and invention; they have always shaped our lives.’ Bird Ladder Sky Snake is an invitation to dream alongside two prolific artists, to follow their muse, and to slip between realms of existence.