Altered Pages

"Growing up reading stories about the moon outlining rabbits in the cold winter. The withered trees were not thirsty."

I was intrigued by some posts I saw online about altered book art. This style of art uses pages from books and adds art work on top of the text to create the pieces. I saw examples using ink, pastel, acrylic paint and watercolour. Since I have a class coming up that is based on an artist that uses both images, words and weaving I decided to do some experimenting.

The first thing I did was pick up a used book that look old. I bought a copy of "Mostly In Clover" by Harry J. Boyle, printing in 1963. I loved the old look of the book and the older way it was written. From the snippets I glanced at the book seems to be about growing up in rural Ontario.

The next part was the hardest for me. Being a book lover I would never support destroying books so cutting a page out of a book was hard to do, not psychically but mentally. It took me three days to start the project because of this. I felt like I should at least read the book first but then thought maybe I'd get attached to it and then I wouldn't' be able to use it for this project. Silly I know but that's what ran through my mind.

Eventually I sliced a page out and started in on my first experiment.

I looked at the page I cut out and started to read though the text circling words that stood out, trying to weave together an sentence or thought with those words. I then decided on the imagery I wanted to reinforce the words I had chosen and the method by which I would create the art around the words.  I experimented with different materials including watercolour, acrylic and ink.  I even did some simple stitching with embroidery floss to lead the eye from word to word.

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"The symphony and the twinkling lights frighten us. The sound travelled and burned like a demon."

"This armour of daring was suddenly bearing burdens of a mighty adventure.".