In No Strange Land

Here is the first book I've worked in, (besides my own) of the altered board book round robin I'm participating in with other artists in the Traveler's Hart group. It is Lunaea's Jewels & Treasures.
So
if
you
are
Lunaea
or
someone
else
participating
in
my group,
turn
back
now...

Here's what it looks like inside with no flash.And here it is outside in the sun.

The pages were already a nice flat black gesso, a great base to work from, and I glued on a layer of crinkled purple tissue paper, then covered that up with purple and gold paints. The images are all magazine or catalog pictures, and old Italian stamps, and the poem is from a vintage book of poems I use for collage, on top of some Japanese candy wrapper with a cool pattern.
This is the left-hand page, taken outside so there is a shadow of the hand.
Some details of the left hand page, include some Italian stamps in various shades of purple and pink. And a shadowy hand that is....

A little popped-out, and sparkly of course.
This is the other side of the hand, it says Devotional.
Here is the poem, in case you can't read it:
IN NO STRANGE LAND
O WORLD invisible, we view thee,
O world intangible, we touch thee,
O world unknowable, we know thee,
Inapprehensible, we clutch thee!

This poem helped me pull together the meaning of the collage I was making here in Lunaea's book. That this devotional impulse is one of our greatest treasures we ever do possess. If it requires spiraling into and out of the dark deep cave, traveling far away or just looking at the palm of our hands. It is all intangible and unknowable and invisible. But yet we reach for it.

This is the right hand page of the two page spread.