Poem by Sandra Alcosser; hand colored etchings by Michele Burgess. Text on Arches watercolor paper, hand dyed by Merilyn Britt. Etchings printed on Kitakata. Bound in custom-made Cave paper and housed in a tray case covered with hand dyed linen. 11 1/4” x 7 3/4”. Edition of 30. 2004. $2,500. (Three copies remaining.)

For Vedran Smailovic, the cellist of Sarajevo who, when twenty-two of his neighbors were bombed in a breadline, played his cello in that crater for the next twenty-two days. He played an adagio that had been recovered in pieces from the Dresden bombing of the Second World War. A celebration of the redemptive power of art, specifically music and the impact of fire, The Blue Vein explores the honesty and pure storytelling of human and natural disaster.