I have been interested in altered books for a few years now.I even contemplated making one as part of a project at University, but I never got round to it.There is something magical about transforming the written word into a work of art.The making of such a book incorporates the use of collage, mixed media, paper, fabric and all the media I like working in.I started this book about 3 years ago.I did one page and then forgot all about it until I found it again recently.
In one day I managed to do 4 pages: the next day I did 2.Work on it was very sporadic and I hadn’t been going long before I realised that the print was quite small and was being overwhelmed by the images.It was important to me that some of the original text was retained.This could be a word or a sentence of my own choosing.So I went through the first few pages choosing the text.
I had absolutely no idea of how the page would look in advance, I responded in an instinctual way: the way the words spoke to me!After I had chosen my words, I then went through the book adding colour to pages (including those I hadn’t chosen the text of yet) and employed different media, like oil pastel, acrylics, pen and ink.I ripped, punched and clipped pages wherever I wanted with no thought to how the end product would look, I just knew that I didn’t want it to be ‘pretty’ or like a scrapbook.
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