Destellos de Sofía, A New Miniature Book

A pop-up!

Magenta for spirituality, the color of the highest flight of the heart...

It's been a long, but pleasurable process to create this book. First, I wrote the poetry throughout the last two years. Then, I created the drawings, many of them inspired by poetry written by other poets, including Luis A. Rodríguez and Stephen Cipot, whose work was a great inspiration to my own visual work. Next, I created a first version of the book, which did not contain any images and which also was bigger in size. But I felt that I wanted this book to say more about what it means to me, and decided to pair the poems with images. I soon realized that I had almost all the drawings I needed and that they each complimented a particular poem. Since I had chosen to make drawings inspired by poetry that explored the same themes I was exploring, it turned out I was also drawing for my own poems. Some drawings, of course, were created especially for this book.


With this book, I have decided to go back to my bookmaking roots: miniature books. I think that from now on this will be the only format for my books. It is what I truly enjoy and what I truly see as the best carrier of my thoughts. I want my book to be a jewel, but an unobtrusive one, a treasure that is both easy to conceal and to share.

From the beginning, I thought I wanted a black and white book, with a certain paper that I enjoy because of its texture (Somerset velvet), but I still struggled with the design, changing my mind about it several times, and even buying plenty of that fuchsia paper you can see now as end pages, but that at some point was supposed to be for the cover of the book. I always know exactly how I want my books from the beginning of the process, but this time I got confused because I wanted to make the book extra special. In the end, I went back to the beginning and created the design very similar to what I had originally envisioned. I was extremely relieved to see the final result and to be able to add a touch of color as well.

I see this book as a resource as well as a piece of art. First, I hope that when you hold the book in your hands, you will feel pleasure and joy at holding something tiny, but made with great love and care. I hope it will be a little jewel you can hold and look at, and read a little at a time. Second, I hope that you can use the poems for your own needs. There is a poem you can use for invoking words, another for expressing sacred love, another to offer your presence to someone who is going through depression or sadness, another to give condolences or support someone who has lost a loved one, another to invoke wisdom. You can write one of these poems on a piece of paper and think of the person you are giving it to. Or you can record it as a phone message and send it with your voice. Or you can read in his or her ear, letting your voice carry your feelings and wishes. Or you can simply put the book somewhere where it will remind you that life is what you make of it and pleasure and beauty can help us live better. Or you can get inspired by it to create your own book with the help of my Bookmaking Tutorial series of posts, which I will be publishing over the next few days in my "secret blog" Hoy, artista. Here is the first post: http://hoy-artista.blogspot.com/2011/06/how-to-make-book-part-1.html

So far, this edition of 50 books will be in Spanish, although I am considering creating an English version as well. The price is $25 per book and the numbers 1, 50, 7 and 16 are already taken. If you would like to reserve your favorite number, write to me: tanyaetorres@yahoo.com and I will give you all the details. I look forward to having a special presentation when the entire edition is ready.

I hope you like my little book of mystical poetry, and I hope what it contains touches the hearts of the people who hold it in their hands when its 49 twins are all finally born!