Artist Sarah Mostow shows her handmade illustrated books at the Philmont Public Library’s Karen Garafalo Cultural Center. Mostow’s books are unique objects, beautiful to look at. They tell her personal history interwoven with world history through vivid drawings, paintings and collages and handwritten text.

“My subject matter is my own experience,” she says. “I’ve written about learning to drive, the life and death of my Jewish grandmother, my job teaching English in Paris. My books are personal stories that reflect a larger idea: That the state of being a person in the world is a strange and funny thing.”

Sarah Mostow, who spends weekends and summers in Ghent, has participated in group exhibitions at the AIR Gallery, Blue Mountain Gallery, Bank Street College of Education and the Hudson Arts Walk. She has worked as a museum educator and teaching artist at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, the Morgan Library and Museum, the New-York Historical Society and the Hudson River Museum.