Ideal bookshelf

 A friend of mine from college, Jane Mount, is an entrepreneur and artist now living in NYC.  Her penchant for creativity has led her in many directions.  Once, when watching Oprah, I was surprised (and not) to see her NYC apartment featured for its one of a kind use of a small space.  If you check out her website janemount.com, you will be struck with admiration for the depth and variety of her work.  Yesterday she posted something on Facebook about wanting friends to send her a list of their favorite books.  She does these amazing illustrations of their spines of these books arranged together on a shelf.   I was thinking that this would be such a great piece of art to preserve memories for your child or for you.  In her own words, "When I am struck by some new topic, usually the first thing I do is buy several books about it. My shelves are filled with these starts, and that’s part of the reason I love cataloging them in paintings, mine and others.  We all show off our books on shelves like merit badges, because we’re proud of the ideas we’ve ingested to make us who we are. We are proud to display what has inspired us, as we should be, and we hope to connect to other people by doing so. When I paint someone else’s bookshelf and they have some of the same books I do, I feel amazingly joyful about it, and about them."  Jane takes commissions for paintings and illustrations and also sells prints on Etsy at www.etsy.com/shop/janemount