The book is printed on cardstock using an inkjet printer, and is covered in a white silk paper with metallic gold threads. The title page is visible through the cover and is hand-inked. Old family photographs, manipulated in Photoshop, are used to illustrate the nine verses. Garamond is the font used. The book is encased in a slipcover.

The real surprise comes at the end of the book, where laminated "decoder cards" are provided to reveal, hidden within the text, my definition of "faith".

The "decoded" word that shows up on this particular page is "that".

I used CD holders to create the see-through pockets. I also decided to give the photographs a grainy, "bad photocopy" kind of look, for two reasons: the picture that I had of my great-grandfather that I wanted to use was a bad photocopy :-) and I think it emphasizes the fact that the things we have faith in aren't always easy to see.

I live in a rural town in Minnesota, and work largely in isolation. I find the Internet a strange and fascinating place to gather inspiration. On one of my e-mail lists, I spotted a notice of a new gallery opening in the Twin Cities -- the Gallery at Susan Hensel Design -- and the owner of the gallery is a book artist.

Since I've started sharing my work, I've found a couple of things: not everybody "gets" book art, and its really hard to show my books in a photograph. When Susan announced a Call for Art, I thought this might be the perfect opportunity. Not only was she sure to understand book art, she's close enough that I could always bring the book in for her to have a closer look

The deadline for her first exhibit was too close, but she announced the theme of the second exhibit -- "A LEAP OF FAITH". So, in search of inspiration, I began to search the Internet. I found the biblical definition of faith -- to paraphrase, a belief in things unseen. I started thinking about all the things that I believe in that can't be seen. And, since I like all of my books to "do" something, I decided to hide a message in the text, and have the reader do something to discover it.

The message I decided to hide had nine words, so that meant I needed nine pages of things that I have faith in. I decided to base the writing on a syllabic poetic form based on the Fibonacci sequence - another "unseen" aspect of the work. I tried several structures for the book itself, but the one you see here is the one I decided worked the best.