​

I met Romanian Artist Daniela Frumuseanu in 2009 and we became very good friends through our shared experiences of being artists and educators. As our friendship progressed, I thought it would be interesting to begin a collaborative art project so I proposed to send her a handmade book which we could both work on together. The idea would be to fill up the pages with drawings, writings, and collages. As time progressed, we thought it would be interesting to ask our students to participate in this exchange of books as well and as a result, the Cultural Book Exchange was born.

 

What I thought would be a one-time shared book exchange experience, blossomed into a cross-cultural visual arts community between us. We have completed a total of 35 artist books, which have been shown in various exhibition spaces beginning in 2009 in the United States and throughout Romania until the present day.

 

As a result of the success of our collaboration, we have invited artists from around the world to participate in our book project. Participating artists from Europe, India, The Netherlands and the United States have contributing to the exchange.