Saturday 23 August 2008

Shopping List Saturday

1)Pale Berries, a pocket fairy tale book no4, lapommestories 2)PATIENCE book of handmade paper ElenaMary 3)Mail Book (small) badbooks 4)ZINE My Perfect World ninkumpoop 5)fabric Art Journal patc9195 6)Altered quilted felt and textile book FiBreRomance 7)mixed media collage nature journal album ephemera stamps tags altered book IrishEyesArt 8)Seeking nelliewortman
Created using flickr toys Mosaic Maker

Welcome to this week's Shopping List Saturday! A slightly shorter list this week, but carefully chosen nonetheless.

These art books fascinate me, and I think this fascination stems from my college years (too long ago to mention!). I completed a degree in Graphic Design, and specialised in Illustration and for me, this opened many doors of experimentation. I became completely immersed in collage and creating vivid sketchbooks based on my own sketches with snippets of magazine/book illustrations pasted in and painted over for a layered effect.
Similar to the ACEOs of last week, these art books go one step further. I like the fact that artists take an existing book, alter it and create something new from it - whether it is the cover and spine with brand new pages, or the worked-into existing pages with a new cover attached. I also admire those artists who create books completely from scratch!

The idea that a book can be paper or card; wood or feathers; beads or fabric; drawn, printed or embroidered is wonderful! This takes the humble (and always beautiful) book to a new level. I like that the book becomes a work of art, a tactile thing that provides pleasure from touch as well as the usual visual stimulus. There are endless ways these books can lead you as an artist, and I find that incredibly stimulating and inspiring. Think of all of those emotions and ideas that bimble about in your head, and how they can be translated in these mini journeys of thoughts, experiences and feelings. Are you feeling this too??

4 comments:

Mariana said...

I love books... I actually want to learn bookbinding (if only I could find a workshop somewhere). And this collage way of making things I think is fantastic. So colorful and inspiring...
Nice List. Im on my way to make mine!

K said...

Thank you so much for featuring one of my works. It is sweet to see mine up there with such great other works of art. Altered books and altered photography are becoming such passion of mine.

Thank you again ;)

Kristen said...

Those are great!
I love all the detail put into each book~ what a nice collection you put together :)

Michala Gyetvai (Kayla coo) said...

I love textile books and at the moment there is a real trend to make books works of art.
Perhaps, as we use computers so much books become more objects of beauty.