Sharon made artists books. She advances the aesthetic of Jiri Kolar. Using white-out in Police (State) USA, for example, Sharon makes a legal brief about a trivial arrest interesting. Drawn in by her art, you actually read the text, and you are shocked to discover the Supreme court has essentially vitiated the Fourth Amendment, legalizing arbitrary arrest. Politics is always debatable.

Sharon Gilbert read White Oleander as she lay dying of lung cancer. White Oleander is a great novel. There was also an adequate movie. It's about a mother and daughter and the effect of the mother on the daughter. In the movie the mother is an artist as Sharon was an artist. In the novel the mother is a poet. Elena Bakaitis writes to say she too is reading White Oleander.

The plume from the burning World Trade Center blew over Sharon's house in Brooklyn for six months. She accompanied her parents while her father worked on the Manhattan Project. "You never smoked," I said to her. "Yes, I did," she said, "before Elena and Ellery were born." Her illness seemed political because Sharon was so aware of the political element in everyday life and words.

I lived with Sharon's art one summer when she and her family were in Spain. I was house-sitting, and trying to edit a libretto by Carlo Goldoni translated by W.H.Auden. Sharon cut up texts and used the words, let us say, to collage into drawings. In the autumn I gave her a Xerox of Auden's old typewritten manuscript. In the spring her three collages illuminated the published edition of Arcifanfaro.

Against the invasion of Iraq:
Sharon Gilbert and Michael Andre by Vyt Bakaitis; Michael Andre and Vyt Bakaitis by Sharon Gilbert.

Medium: Color Xerox.
Montage: Sharon Gilbert.

Caption in pencil:
Why are we smiling?