One of my altered books will be on display at Artworks-mk in the UK. The show is titled (e)motive, and was curated by two lovely ladies, Melanie and Emma, behind weloveyourbooks.com
There is an exhibition catalogue available for purchase online, and you can view photos of the selected work on flickr.
(e)motive
August 28th to September 24th, 2010
Artworks-mk
Great Linford Arts Workshop, Parklands,
Great Linford, Milton Keynes,
MK14 5DZ, UK
Back in June Stephanie wrote a wonderful blog post about books that guided her through design school. I was really inspired by this and decided I wanted to write something along the same lines about the books that have inspired me in my own work as an artist. I’ve included photos of the covers and links to purchasing each online, just in case any of these take your fancy.
New Directions in Altered Books by Gabe Cyr
This is the book that started me down the road of altering old books and turning them into art. For years I had been pondering using books in my work and through the ideas in this book I was finally able to move from thinking to making real work. There are plenty of projects to choose from with excellent step-by-step instructions, and a large gallery of work for inspiration.
Paper Engineering & Pop-Ups for Dummies by Rob Ives
Making altered books eventually led me to experimenting with movable parts and pop-ups and this book has been a terrific resource for ideas. There are many patterns in this book for making paper mechanisms. I tend to use it as a jumping off point for figuring out how to make a custom piece to suit my needs.
The Penland Book of Handmade Books
While this book does have instructional pieces in it I actually bought it for the gallery of works, many of which push the boundary of what is a book. The image on the cover is a great example of this. The book is a collaboration between Lark Books and the Penland School of Crafts, located in North Carolina. There is some really incredible art work inside.
Playing with Books by Jason Thompson
I originally picked up this book for the fabulous gallery of work in the back featuring many of the internationally known altered book artists I’ve come across. Most of the content is instructional with projects about making things from book pages rather than full books. I used one example to create the five petal flowers for my installation in Container Art. Lots of the projects inside are decorative.
Creative Time & Space: Making Room For Making Art by Rice Freeman-Zachery
Nothing is more helpful to an artist than talking to other artists about how they pursue their art. This is a book which is a great resource for how to make time and create space in your life to be creative. It’s written by an artist and it features many helpful hints from the fourteen artists she interviewed for the book. All of them pursue their craft full time and have worked hard to make it work for them.
Artist Survival Skills by Chris Tyrell
I’ve come to realize that to be a successful artist you have to think about yourself as an entrepreneur. It’s one of those things they don’t teach in art school and have to learn along the way. Chris Tyrell’s book is a handy reference for helping to develop a professional art practice beyond the art making, with hints on pricing art, maintaining an inventory list of work, developing mailing lists, and the dreaded taxes. I took a four week workshop with Chris last year, which was money well spent and a kickstart to my current trajectory as an artist.
If you’re interested in buying any of these books, do try RubyDog’s Art House for the books on altered books. It’s where I’ve purchases some of these and Leanne has many other creative resources in the shop. As much as possible I like to support local stores when book buying.
This week I’ve spent every day onsite at the PNE working on my installation for the Container Art show. I wasn’t expecting to be there so much but I had a few technical difficulties with the hanging on Monday and then I’ve been back a few times to tweak different things. Everything else I needed to do has gone by the wayside this week because nothing is more important than getting this show exactly right before the PNE opens.
It’s been a great experience so far and the staff at the PNE have been supportive and helpful. I’ve met some of the other artists also showing at Container Art and it’s wonderful to see the different types of work and how each person has chosen to make use of their shipping container gallery space. I don’t have photos yet of anyone else’s work because everyone is still in the process of installing.
This is what the Container Art Gallery space looks like from the outside, to give you an idea of what to look for. It’s big and hard to miss. There will be video projections and light displays on the outside during the evening hours of the PNE. On the inside there will be art, including paintings, altered books, and wild installations I’m not sure how to describe. You’ll just have to go and see it for yourselves.
In my container the twenty-five encyclopedias float along the side and back walls, and the multitude of paper flowers I was working on last week hang from the ceiling. The final touch was to add a few arrangements of driftwood, pine cones, sticks, rocks and wildflowers along the bottom wall and corners. These were a last minute addition I decided was needed because the space along the lower part of the walls looked stark and empty.
The work will be on display for the two week run of the PNE and access to the Container Art show is included with the price of admission. Check it out if you get the chance and please do social share about the show on twitter, facebook, flickr, etc.
Earlier this week I decided the installation I’ve been putting together for Container Art needed “something more”, and so I started making paper flowers. These are made from five pieces of paper and then attached together with glue. I have made about fifty of them using pages cut from one of the left over encyclopedia volumes. You’ll have to wait and see what I’m going to do with them as part of the display.
The paper flower design is taken from Playing With Books by Jason Thompson, which I purchased from RubyDog’s Art House.
[A big thank you to Ariane for coming over earlier this week to hang out and help me make a few of the flowers.]
I finished the last book in the Forgotten Knowledge series last Friday morning and felt a mix of relief, satisfaction and sadness at finally getting them all done. I arranged them on the dinning room table in a circle to take a look at them for the first time as a set. They look amazing.
While there are about a million ways for these to be displayed, for the purposes of the Container Art space they will be hung on the wall fully open. I hope you can drop by the PNE and visit the show. More photos to come once this work is installed.
I was away on Quadra Island with Boris’ family last week which was a vacation but it also meant a long break from working on this project. Monday I resumed cutting up encyclopedias and as of today I have twenty-one of the twenty-five books completed. I love it when hard work pays off and things go smoothly. When all the books are done I can get started on some of the other ideas I have in mind to pull together for the installation. I have about two weeks left before this gets installed in the Container. I’m excited.
The books featured in these photos contain seaweed, deer vertebrae, some form of fungus, chamomile, acorn caps, and drift wood. I had to rehydrate the seaweed in order to work with it because it was too dry and brittle to put in a book after sitting in my studio for weeks. I was amazed at how well it revived. It will dry out again over time, as will the chamomile flowers, but I’m okay with that.
Previous posts about this project (which will be on display in the Container Art show at the PNE): [1] [2] [3]
This week I’ve been working away at the individual altered books that will be assembled into the installation for the Container Art show. I set a goal to complete ten of these by the end of this week and as of yesterday afternoon I finished number eight. I’m very pleased with how this project is slowly coming together. Once all the books are finished I need to do further planning on how these will be displayed. My idea has evolved a bit since I wrote up the proposal over a month ago.
This is a very photo heavy blog entry because I wanted to document the process of making one of my altered books. I chose this one specifically because it is my first book with movable parts. It was a very involved process and I had a lot of figuring out to do as I went along, but I loved every minute of making it. The idea of making a book with movable parts was motivated by an artist call put out by 23 Sandy Gallery in Portland, which I intend to enter.
The whole process started with selecting the right book for the project, one that was not too thick or heavy, and then I pulled out bits of ephemera to select the visual aspects of the book. I narrowed things down to a set of colourful pasteboard butterflies and started brainstorming ways of how I’d like them to move within the book. I decided the best way to proceed was to make a paper mechanism based on the designs in my book Paper Engineering & Pop-ups for Dummies. Most of the designs were vertical and I needed something to work horizontally, so it meant making a prototype in order to figure out how to make it work for me. Learning by doing is often the only way I can figure things out for myself.
Pictured here are the pieces of the prototype mechanism I made from cardstock. The next step was figuring out where I wanted to place these in the book and how I could adapt it to my needs.
I decided to incorporate two working mechanisms into the design and cut two niches into the book in the lower right and upper left, leaving a layer of pages on either side to hide the mechanisms.
I made two new mechanisms based on my original prototype but smaller so they would fit within the height of the stacked book pages. I needed to leave a bit of space underneath so the paper rod in the middle had room to move freely without catching on the bottom of the niche.
I padded the bottom and top edge of the niche with pieces of paper cut from the book itself.
(I skipped photographing a few steps here). Pictured below is what the book looked like after all of my work with the mechanisms was complete. They were tucked away in working order within the book pages with the middle rod poking through a hole through the top layer of pages. I chose two brass watch parts as the turning knobs. At this point I started figuring out the composition of the book and realized I needed to reconsider the red gears as the platform for the butterflies.
I chose sewing pattern paper as the first layer on the background because I love the yellow brown colour and warmth of the paper. I knew I would add something more to it as I went along but wasn’t quite sure what that would be.
At this point I had also decided to make leaves for the butterflies to sit upon, and these would be the pieces that turned. I made the leaves from green paper with magnolia leaf skeletons layered on top to make them look more real. This is my favorite detail of the whole artwork, and I kind of wish I hadn’t hidden so much of them under the butterflies when I attached them.
The final touches on the book was to add a few more decorative elements to the pages using scraps of Japanese paper and printing a leaf design with a rubber stamp.
There are eight butterflies all over the book, with five attached to the movable leaves and three in stationary positions on the background pages.
After all the work I did on this the actual movement within the book is very simple, it allows one to turn the butterfly leaves in a circle. I kept it simple on purpose because this is my very first movable parts book and there is plenty of room to be more ambitious with future projects.
The finished altered book is lovely to look at and fun to play with. Whether or not this work gets accepted into the juried show at 23 Sandy, it provided me with the opportunity to experiment in new ways and create work I may not have otherwise made.
Materials used: book, sewing pattern paper, Japanese paper, rubber stamp & ink, pasteboard butterflies, card stock, brass watch parts, leaf skeletons, lots of gel medium, and lots of glue.
A few months ago I was contacted by Ira and Oksana, two people in the Ukraine who write a book blog called Chytomo. They did an interview with me by email about my altered book works and this was translated into Ukrainian. It just recently went live on Chytomo so I thought I’d post the original English version here for people to read.
Chytomo: Can you tell us something about your first experience of altered book creation? Why did you begin to transform already published books?
RA: I started thinking about using books to create artwork in 2007, when I saw the work of Timothy Karpinski in Portland. He had painted his illustration onto the pages of old books, and I loved the idea. I was inspired and decided to apply the idea using photos, as my work at the time was primarily photography. This led to experimentation using inkjet image transfer paper to print my photographs within the pages of books. But the image transfer process didn’t mix well with the aged and brittle paper of book pages, so I left this idea on hold until I felt I had the right tools to create work in the way I envisioned.
In late 2007 I began to work in mixed media collage and spent the next two years developing a feel for techniques. My primary medium has always been film photography but as I worked more with a digital format I craved the satisfaction of creating work “hands-on”. In September 2009 I came across a wonderful book called, “New Directions in Altered Books” and suddenly my long neglected desire to work with books was reignited. It opened up a whole new world of artistic possibilities for me, and creating collage in three dimensions.
Chytomo: I haven’t noticed you to use the term “artbook”. I am right? Іs it because of another meaning of your artworks? what means “altered book”? (maybe, I have difficulties with translation? is it your own definition?)
RA: I use the term “altered book” because I take existing books and alter them to create my artwork, rather than making the book itself. It’s not my own definition.
Chytomo: The material for your artworks are the old books. And what the source of inspiration?
RA: There are two different ways I approach creating an altered book. Sometimes I want to experiment with a particular way of altering the book, for example a way of folding the pages or cutting into the book. Another source of inspiration are the objects or materials I have on hand. In the case of the few books I’ve created using wooden toy animals i was very much inspired to create an appropriate home for them.
Chytomo: And why such kind of material? Do you think the traditional kinds of materials have a limited abilities of expression? It seemed to have more social sense?
RA: I tend to use whatever I can find, either in stores or coming across items while wandering around outside. I am self-taught in these techniques so I don’t have any pre-conceived ideas of how I should be doing this or what materials I should be using. I think with collage pretty much anything can be used as a material.
Chytomo: What are the prefered techniques in this artwork?
RA: Because I’ve only been making altered books for about ten months I don’t yet have a preferred technique for how to approach making them. I try to experiment as much as possible because there are so many different things I can do to books.
Chytomo: How much does it take to create such kind of book and how many books had been already created?
RA: It takes me somewhere between 8 to 10 hours to create an altered book. The time varies depending upon what I’m trying to make. I have made nineteen altered books to date.
Chytomo: Is there any connection between the book content and further artwork?
RA: The content of the books I’ve chosen so far have nothing to do with the compositions I create within their pages. I try not to pay too much attention to what the book is about.
Chytomo: Do you have some favourite authors to work with?
RA: Not for making the altered books, but I do for reading. 🙂
Chytomo: Do you use only old books? Is it because the modern literature can’t inspire?
RA: Most of the books are old but this is more because older books were made with a stitched binding. Modern books are more often put together with a glued binding and this limits what I can do with the book because it’s more fragile.
Chytomo: Do you like to read? What are your favourite books?
RA: I do love to read. Some of my favorite books that I’ve read recently are, “The Time Traveler’s Wife”, “Animal, Vegetable, Miracle”, and “The Gargoyle”.
Chytomo: Is it your main job? Or it is just something like hobby?
RA: At the moment I am concentrating full-time on working as an artist. I was working for a web design company here in Vancouver, but decided to take a break from working for someone else to concentrate on my art.
Chytomo: What the average price of your altered book? Is it possible to order it from Ukraine? In what way?
RA: Some of the altered books are available online in my etsy shop. The average price is $500 USD.
Chytomo: Can you name anybody, who creates such kind of books and has a big “artbook name”?
RA: There are quite a few artists I’ve come across since I’ve started doing this who also work with books:
Brian Dettmer’s book autopsies, Georgia Russell slashes and cuts books, and Su Blackwell creates lovely dioramas in books.
Chytomo: Can you say something about Ukrainian books or artbooks?
RA: I’m not familiar with any Ukranian books or artbooks, but I’ve always admired Ukranian pattern design.
Many thanks to Ira and Oksana for interviewing me. I would love to do more interviews like this by email or in person, because it’s good practice for talking about my work. (This is a hint to let me know if you think of any such opportunities.)
For the past two weeks I’ve been working on a proposal to do a large scale project of altered books. I’ve never done something like this before so it’s been quite a challenge to figure out the best way to approach working with multiple books in a series. Normally I make my altered books as one-of-a-kind pieces and can spend as much as ten hours on each one. For this project I’ve had to simplify how I work with them, come up with a common theme, and develop a process I can apply to making each one.
My plan is to take twenty-five volumes of a set of Funk & Wagnalls encyclopedias and insert natural objects into a niche custom cut from the pages of each book. The book pictured here is the second one I’ve completed, and as you can see the shape I had to cut was fairly complicated. The objects I chose to work with in this piece are two seal vertebrae scavenged for me from Pebbly Beach, Bowen Island, by Anne. The bones are very beautiful and I like their odd shapes protruding from the pages like two gargoyle faces.
I was over on Bowen last weekend and spent most of a walk along the beach and forest collecting things to use for this project. I was a little worried I wouldn’t be able to come up with twenty-five different items but I came home with piles of stuff to work with.
Pictured here are crab bits, drift wood, oyster mushrooms, a pine cone, lichen, seaweed, and bones from a deer. (I had to scrounge through decaying remains to collect those, which is not for everyone).
I’ll reveal more about this project in coming weeks. For now I’m counting down as I work my way through the twenty-five volumes. As of today there are twenty-two more to go.