photo by: Susan Wolfe

Liza MacKinnon's garment made of paper and fiber featuring "The Handmaid's Tale" by Margaret Atwood

A local artist has a new exhibit at the Lawrence Public Library that features children’s garments made from banned books.

Liza MacKinnon’s exhibit, “Banned Babies,” went up Friday morning at the library, 707 Vermont St.

“I wanted to create a thought provoking exhibit that was not too political but still reflected our current times,” MacKinnon told the Journal-World. Interspersed between the garments, which are crafted from paper and fiber, are photos from historic book-burning events.

photo by: Susan Wolfe

Liza MacKinnon’s garment made of paper and fiber featuring “Lord of the Flies” by William Golding

photo by: Susan Wolfe

Liza MacKinnon’s garment made of paper and fiber featuring “The Diary of a Young Girl” by Anne Frank

“This subject was chosen as a natural reaction to current events in our country and around the world,” MacKinnon’s note accompanying the exhibit states. “Depicting the characters and complicated topics from these books as children grounds the viewer in our shared humanity. Even when we feel small, we each make up a part of the whole and are therefore integral, powerful, and important in our community.”

Some of the banned books in MacKinnon’s work are Margaret Atwood’s “The Handmaid’s Tale,” William Golding’s “Lord of the Flies,” and “The Diary of a Young Girl” by Anne Frank.

MacKinnon had a similar exhibit at the library in 2021 that featured garments made of maps to honor Kansas women.

photo by: Mike Yoder

Lawrence artist Liza MacKinnon works in her home studio in central Lawrence. At right and on the wall behind MacKinnon are some of the dresses she’s made out of maps in honor of a variety of Kansas women. At left is a figurine of the Mexican painter Frida Kahlo.