Acrylic on wood, paper in plastic laminate, metal rings, wires, nails and screws
Artist Statement
My artist’s book takes the form of a small wooden bed, its ring-bound pages layered like sheets. Across twenty pages, a poem reflects on the tension between comfort and consequence, asking what it means to lie in the bed we’ve made on Earth. Skeletons in the soil, mangroves that filter sorrow, oak trees that hold witness, and flowers that persist all thread through cycles of beauty and disaster. A dead warbler, an axe handle in the woods, the burning planet—yet also seashells, fireflies, and wonder. The work suggests that the antidote to despair is curiosity and deep observation, inviting us to rest in both sorrow and hope.
Tilly Strauss is a Hudson Valley–based artist whose work explores memory, history, and our layered relationship with the natural world. Rooted in a lifelong connection to her family’s farm, her practice draws on cycles of the land as both subject and metaphor. Through paintings, prints, books, and community projects, she weaves together personal story, art history, and ecological observation. Strauss is especially drawn to overlooked or forgotten women artists, creating zines and illustrated biographies that honor their legacies. Her work often asks questions of comfort and consequence—how we inhabit the earth, what we preserve, and what we lose. At its core, her art is an invitation: to pause, to look closely, and to find resilience in beauty and curiosity.