An old, small book of Keat's poetry came to me from Britian before Christmas via artist Paula Steere.
Paula was organizing "From Britian to Brevard: Altered Books" and I had agreed to
participate. I have never done such a project and was at first overwhelmed with
the variety of information and a ton of ideas. Then reality sunk in and
I realized I had to narrow my options or I would never make the deadline.
Book alteration is definitely an engineering feat - so much more has to be considered when
you are working with many pages, all potential pieces of art, all stuck together in a
definitive binding and already possessed of subject matter.
It was a very time consuming project but one I enjoyed. A week from tonight, Tuesday, March 6 at 6:30 pm, the Satellite Beach Library will host the read and review party for the public. Please
consider yourself invited.
After that the 15 (+/-) creations will be on display in a library case
before they find other venues.
I was really inspired to see what the other artists all came up with....such a great
variety and so many approaches to the same project.
While these books came from a project center in Britain, it seems these days that public
libraries have a lot of discards that are free for the asking. Wouldn't
this concept make a great project for kids of all ages? One inspiring artist
chronicled all of the states she had lived in using maps, envelopes with photos,
souvenirs and the like...gorgeous. And it would
be fun to make a journal or storybook out of one as well.
Just sharing an idea and hoping you will be moved to "rescue" a book sometime.
This looks FABULOUS! And right up my alley! Thank you so much for sharing. I cannot wait to try this. Wish I was close enough to attend your read and review party. How fun!
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Wish you could come too! Every one of the books is so original...and very different, I almost (almost!) want a re-do!
ReplyDeletegorgeous book and what a fun project - I would have a hard time with this project, but it looks like you did a wonderful job. I think I'll try this with some thrift shop books and see what I can come up with.
ReplyDeleteThanks for sharing!
Kelly: the hard part is getting over the fact that you are "destroying" a book! It is even fun to glue pages together (remove some) and just paint on them, or gesso and sketch...the sky is the limit: have fun!
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