Altered Books

Yesterday I spent a blissful six hours at the San Francisco Center for the Book ripping, sewing, gluing, and cutting -- transforming books into art objects. It was with a little trepidation that I made my first tear into a book called The Long Tomorrow, but after my initial hesitation, I got quite into it - sewing pockets, gluing pages together, and even dismantling books entirely to discover their beautiful string bindings. The instructor, Jody Alexander, offered all kinds of great tools, examples, and techniques for working with found books. As an artist who loves containers (i.e. bottles and frames), I really love the idea of using the old discarded book as another form of containment. In particular, I really enjoyed turning this book (pictured here) on Australia into a "safe book," with all the pages glued together and then an opening cut out where some kind of art or poetic meaning could be placed. So many possibilities....such fun to open up to new techniques like these.