The story of Endless Ceaseless is drawn from my experience of a rural childhood in the Ohio River Valley, and the subsequent destruction of my family's home as part of the expansion of coal mining operations in the area. Rather than mourning the loss of our home as a personal indignity, I sue the difficulty and wonder of a child's perspective to contrast with the environmental degradation I witnessed then and now, which is ultimately the greatest loss, one that connects to the larger narrative of mass extinction. In some ways I see this project as a eulogy for the landbase and all the living things it supports. Of significance is the commonness of this story. This is a tale that has been unfolding all around the world throughout human history and with greater intensity since the dawn of the Industrial Age. The current mass extinction can be understood in waves. As Homo sapiens sapiens has traveled and settled around the globe beginning 90,000 years ago with the move from the African continent to the Middle East, minor extinction events have accumulated and accelerated into the sixth mass extinction event. There have been three distinct waves: the first came with the development of tools to hunt megafauna, the second with the agricultural revolution, and the third with the industrial revolution. This is the pattern of human activity on the planet.

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Beyond following historical techniques of papermaking, Siedler understands the gesture of the hand (to hollow out, to level, to add something) in her work as a practice transforming the materiality of paper into text. Text is not a feature added to the surface of a finished sheet but becomes rather integral to the material itself. Whether drawing or painting, she is, in the basest sense, always writing. Her marks of rage, tenderness and rigor are written upon paper in all its haptic sensuality: its sound, smell and feel.

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Using found imagery as a starting point For the past six years, I have focused my energies on printing broadsides in the literary fine press tradition. Each project began with an existing text, selected by an outside party, with all my design and production choices made in service to that text. For the thesis work, I will deviate from this practice and begin with an idea for a grouping of sequential images. I will build a hand-printed artist book around this set of images. Text and additional images will grow from the initial printed pages. The book will serve as a bridge between my previous fine press printing and a new direction in my studio practice. It is my goal to become less reliant on provided texts and commissions, and to use my own thoughts and images as starting points for works larger in scale. The new work will share with my earlier pieces an attention to detail and strong craft ethic. I will set formal constraints for this project. I will limit my materials to use only papers already on hand in my collection. For concept, I will navigate between three project ideas I have struggled to realize in past projects. The image component is based on a group of cropped leaf images. I will draw on the language found in tatting instructions, and in the definition of the word cleave to begin to construct a text to accompany the images. The images and text will evolve together as the book is built. Until now, I had conceived of these three elements: leaf images, cleave, and tatting instructions as three separate projects. I think one reason I have not been able to realize them fully on their own is that all three do not really exist independently of one another---in my mind at least. My project is to explore what it is about these three things that I find so compelling, to find how they are linked and describe one another, and then make an artist book expressing that connection. The edition size and book dimensions will be determined by the materials I have on hand. My goal is to produce an edition size of at least 15 copies, and no more than 30.

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This thesis combines documentation of book, installation, and social art projects from 2012-2015 with reflections on intentions, influences, concepts, and questions.

Anatomia Botanica explores the relationship I have come to develop with my natural environment. It takes the reader through my understanding of three species of flowering plants. These are plants that had a significant impact on my childhood and early adulthood, teaching me to look at our natural environment as far more complex and compelling of respect than we give credit to.

This thesis explores the importance of oneself through sexuality, context, and introspection in the art of book arts. I work with memories, imagination, and consciousness in the form of book arts to express the importance of the self from my personal experience. Through the use of colors, materials, spatial compositions, and other visual components to manifest the content of my art, I want to illuminate the awareness of otherness including gender issues and an individual's vulnerability. Playing with the texts of Chinese and English, I intend to create narratives with languages, images, and other mixed media. In addition to crafting traditional bound books with handmade paper and assembling sculptural book-like objects, I also expand the idea of a book into space. With my books, I share my experience of being a loner, yet solitude helps me to be my better self. Through sharing my personal stories, I hope to invite my audience to empathize themselves with their sympathy and invoke a sense of the importance of the self.