Michele Pollock Studio

09/03/2026

"Trametes versicolor"

Another artist book I made in the online class I'm taking ("Unbound: Artist Books with Toni Hartill" at Take Two Art Courses). I've been familiar with the flag book structure for a long time, but this is the first time I made one. This book is based on all the mushroom logs I've found over the years covered in Turkey Tail mushrooms. When the book is opened, I wanted to re-create that feeling of coming across a mushroom log in the woods. The cover was made from paper pulp in a silicone mold that Amy Greely Studio and I made a few years ago from actual tree bark. The mushrooms are small quilts - gelatin plate prints on junk mail, layered and machine stitched. The book structure is folded and machine stitched together.

08/30/2026

As a child, I didn’t understand that the fields full of Monarchs I played in wouldn’t last. How could I know that they were just a temporary refuge, and that soon the milkweed, and then the Monarchs, would begin to disappear?

The creature that teaches me about the danger of forgetting

08/27/2026

What I've been up to: I'm taking an online course at Take Two Art Courses called "Unbound" and taught by Toni Hartill, which focuses on making artist books. Though I've been making artist books for more than 20 years, it's still fun to re-visit some formats, to get new perspectives, and to create personal challenges. I'm trying to create some artist books in formats I haven't used before, trying to incorporate some of my poetry in those books, and trying to focus exclusively on making artist books during the course. Here's my first one, called "Likely Harmless." It uses a meander book format, which seemed perfect for the poem about a snake and the "map" imagery.

08/16/2026

The first in a series of essays about my encounters in nature and what they have taught me, about art and life.

The plant that taught me to look

08/02/2026

Every year, sometime in July, I begin waiting for it. Not for the first hint of autumn color, which comes much later, but for a transformation that happens along the roadsides, in abandoned fields, and on the edges of the woods where I spend so much of my time. Where I live, the endless greens of early summer begin to give way to purple and gold.

Yellow and purple as one conversation of summer

07/30/2026

I was invited to participate in a group project which pairs artists and writers with a local native plant that is in the Indiana University herbarium. My plant is common greenbrier (Smilax rotundifolia). I've been eco-printing paper with greenbrier leaves and eco-dyeing embroidery threads with it. But I'm also researching greenbrier in culture and history. I found an obscure Greek myth about a wood nymph named Smilax. I just finished making an artist book about her story, which you can hear me read in the short video.

07/19/2026

Over the years, I’ve come to realize that one of the most important raw materials in my artwork is Time.

Durational artwork and collaborating with Time

07/15/2026

The piece I made during my residency at Indiana Dunes National Park is part of this exhibition. I'll be at the reception on Friday - I'm excited to see all the work by resident artists over the last few years. If you're in the area, stop by and see thr show!

07/05/2026

A reflection on all the non-traditional places my poetry lives.

All the places where my poems live, beyond traditional "publishing"