Altered Books: Awaiting the Golden Egg

September 9, 2011

If you haven’t guessed by now the theme for the series I’m working on for the Culture Crawl is “Birds”. The work I shared yesterday is one “style” of altered book I’ll be making, and this book is representative of a second group of books I have planned.

I actually started this series back in March 2010 when I created two niche cut books using imagery of trees and bird-related items. All are made from books that are blank inside and out, because they were publisher mockups for the hardcover version of Harry Potter novels. My friend Siobhan saved them from the bin and gifted them to me for altering.

I’m going to continue to create these using similar elements: a doorway cut into a tree with items related to birds on the inside, and a design printed along the edges of the closed pages. While I really like the use of small twigs incorporated into the previous two books in this series, having them makes it difficult to store/ship the work because they stick out and are delicate.

Materials used: blank book, ink jet print of photo, transparent egg, gesso, book page scraps, wine cork, rubber stamp & ink, and gel medium.

Altered Books: The Owl House & Home

September 8, 20114 Comments

I’m about to let you in on a little secret…I don’t love all the altered books I make. True story. There are some I feel pretty meh about, while others I absolutely adore and will probably have a hard time parting with. This owl book falls into this second group of favoured pieces that I’m not sure I can give up. (But I will).

I’m continuing to use the birds cut from the same encyclopedia as the ones I’ve used in the recycled collages I shared previously. There is a section on owls I’ve been saving and now at least some of these are going to show up in altered books.

As always I’m experimenting with how I work with the books. With this one I’ve folded the pages inward towards the spine but done the middle section at a different level. I wanted to play with varying how I fold the pages rather than keeping things the same throughout the book.

This is the first of two altered books I’ve completed this week. I’ll share the other tomorrow.

Materials used: book, card stock, paper owl, hand-cut leaves, wine cork (which you can’t see), and white glue.

Altered Books: Experiments with Page Folding

August 23, 2011

Experiments with new directions in book altering continues, this time with all the pages still attached to the covers. These explorations are part of the planning stages of a commissioned piece for a client, and I wanted to try something different.

Normally I follow the same pattern of folding the pages through out a book but with these two the folds are irregular and create a ripple effect through the book. It’s an interesting technique, but it doesn’t entirely work for me. I need to experiment further to figure out how to do this better.

I may end up removing the covers from these books to use in a collage, and then turn these into a wall piece. I like the idea of the shaped pages rippling from one book to the other.

Check out the work of Issac Salazar for advanced book page folding.

Altered Books: Experimenting with Book Bursts

August 18, 2011

I recently picked up a copy of The Repurposed Library by Lisa Occhipinti at Oscar’s Art Books, and last week I began exploring some of the projects from its pages.

I was drawn to the elegant simplicity of these book bursts, which are made from cutting a book into sections and then folding the pages. I chose a fairly thick book so it took quite a long time to do all that folding.

Each one is done in a slightly different way, and it’s interesting to see the patterns and texture that emerge in each. I’m going to experiment a bit more with something different again with the remaining section of the book.

It feels really good to be exploring books in a different way than usual and I’m curious to see where this will lead.

Upcycled Collage: Hummingbirds

August 16, 2011

I’m still a week behind on sharing new work, but my excuse this time is vacation. Boris and I were on Pender Island with friends for five nights and it was a glorious getaway for all those involved. I debating doing a big of blogging while I was there, but I preferred having a laptop-free break.

The base for this collage is the cover of a wooden cake box originally from a Hotel in Germany. I picked it up at Value Village and am saving the rest of the box for a future mixed media piece.

With the hummingbirds I decided to make yet further explorations into creating what I wanted by cutting the shapes from paper. This time the usual clouds, but also leaves, branches, and a nest for Mrs. Hummingbird. The wood was first layered with strips of sewing pattern paper to tone down, but not hide the existing text.

I left the original metal hardware on the box lid, as you can see at the corners and part of the latch on the bottom edge. I like trying to incorporate as much of the original details of these found materials as I can. I hope I can source more wooden boxes from Value Village before I run out of what I have.

Materials used: wooden box lid, security envelopes, book page scraps, sewing pattern paper, and paper birds.

Upcycled Collage: Crane & Book Cover

August 8, 2011

This is the second upcycled collage I completed last week. It was very satisfying to sit down for the day and come away with two completed collages. You should’ve seen the HUGE mess in the studio when I was finished.

Normally with the books I use in my altered book work the cover of the books ends up hidden away. This one was much too nice to not feature in a composition and so it’s ended up as the background for this collage.

I chose the crane for this because it was the first thing I came across when I opened the bird encyclopedia to select a bird. It seemed like the perfect one to go with the colours and flower motif. I decided to continue with the paper waves because the crane is also a wading bird.

I sorted through the pile of saved envelopes looking for something that would go well with the patterns on the cover but wasn’t the usual blues of security envelopes. I found one with this grey pattern that feels very Japanese, and it ended up being the perfect thing.

Materials used: book cover, thread, paper bird, book page scraps, security envelopes, and gel medium.

Upcycled Collage: The Wading Birds

August 4, 20111 Comment

The bird collages made from upcycled materials continue this week with three new pieces almost completed. This is the first of the three, and also my favorite of them all.

The canvas for this collage is the cover of a wooden box, the rest of which I used earlier this year in another mixed media assemblage piece. The Japanese characters are part of the original cover design and I tried to incorporate them into the composition because they’re lovely.

It was fun to try different things with the same materials. So far I’ve mostly been making clouds with the scrap book pages and security envelopes, but this time it made more sense to reference water because these are shore birds.

The finished artwork feels very Japanese, and I love how beautifully all the elements come together.

Materials used: sewing pattern paper, security envelopes, book pages, paper birds, wooden box lid, and gel medium.

Upcycled Collage: Book Cover & Birds

August 2, 2011

I removed this cover from a sample altered book I’d put together for one of the workshops I taught earlier this year. I don’t normally remove covers from the books I use but I did in this case and decided to hold on to it and use it in something else. I was really hoping to use it in a collage somehow and here it is at last.

This is part of a series of collages I’m creating as a warm up. I’ve taken most of the summer off from making things and it feels good to get back to it.

As mentioned previously, I’m tentatively calling this series, “Put a Bird on it”, as each one will be a whimsical composition containing birds. They all come from the same bird book I found at Value Village and each collage contains upcycled security envelopes, scrap book pages and thread. I’ve decided to use both found wood boxes and book covers as the “canvas” for these.

Even though it’s still months away my efforts in producing new work is in preparation for the Eastside Culture Crawl in November. Stay tuned for more new work.

Altered Book: Three Little Pigs

May 19, 20112 Comments

Do you remember the paper cut Big Bad Wolf I shared a few weeks ago? Well these are the Three Little Pigs altered books that go with him. I decided to make each of them their own house from a book – one of straw, one of sticks and one of bricks.

When these are hung together the wolf will flow around them, from the left side to underneath them. He really completes the whole picture. I decided to treat this more as an installation piece to better tell the story, and I’m saving the final view of everything together for the show.

The piglets I’ve used are toys I bought from Michael’s art supplies, which is not a store I normally visit, but I figured they carried this sort of thing. I painted two of the pigs and left one of them clean and pink so they would look different from each other even though they are exactly the same. The book houses are covered in raffia, dried stems from a lemon balm plant, and paper I hand cut to look like bricks. A special thank you to Horst for cutting the corners off the books with his bandsaw and making them look like houses.

Materials used: three books, raffia, dried lemon balm stems, Japanese paper, white card stock, three plastic pigs, acrylic paint, white glue, and gel medium.

Booklyn Book Arts From Brooklyn

May 16, 2011

On Friday I had the pleasure of attending a presentation by Felice Tebbe, the Collection Development & Education Director of Booklyn Artists Alliance. They are a book arts organization based in Brooklyn, and Felice was in Vancouver as part of a West Coast tour to present and share books from their collection. And what an amazing collection!

The presentation was hilarious because of Felice’s deadpan commentary, but it was also inspiring to hear about how much Booklyn does to nurture and promote their artists. Book arts is alive and well in Brooklyn, and some day I must visit their collection.

Check out the Brooklyn web site to view more of their amazing artist books.

Canvas to the Imagination

Rachael Ashe – Art | Craft | Life

Category: art