New Artist's Book - Who Will Cry?

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This Artist's Book Story:

I spent the weekend at Jill Berry's Painted Pages & All The Elements Book Arts Workshop. Jill is a warm, funny (witty) artist who has decided she is related to Wendell Berry, a wonderful poet of the environment and the soul. He comes from farming stock in Kentucky and so does Jill's husband. She loves his poetry and so do I. Jill, the teacher, graciously did the sewing part of the binding for me as a demonstration to the class. My hands are not quite up to knots - more like up IN knots when challenged by fine work. Thanks, Jill!

For the workshop we made a little book which among other things involved our choice of symbols. For no particular reason I chose African symbols. I have not yet visited Africa and its mysticism intrigues me. The book also required text but there wasn't time, so I brought home a product I had labored in learning but was not quite sure what to do with. I looked online for African poetry and discovered a poem "Who Will Cry", but didn't really like it. Reading further about the plight of African children I began to design the remaining features of the book, using my own words and more applications of character. I'm proud of the result, but most importantly I felt guided by the unseen hands of many children. With their help the rest was easy!