A couple of months ago, my ever-creative-artist sister of mine, Nicole, suggested an "Altered Book Project" between herself, our nephew Miguel, her good friend Lorraine and me. The guide lines were pretty straight forward and consisted of each one of us choosing a hard cover book and altering it before sending it on to the next person, who would then add something to it and send it on until we each contributed to doing some sort of art work in each of the four books, over the course of a few months until your book would return to you altered by everyone in the group. Any technique could be used, from drawing and painting to collage, adding or cutting out pages. Inspiration could come from the theme of the book, it's subject or from the previous additions or it could simply be viewed as a blank canvas to do whatever one felt like doing.
I went to my favourite second hand bookstore in downtown Vancouver and, in a section named "Maritime" amongst boxes and piles of tomes, I found a small, hardcover gem of a book over a hundred years old entitled The Voice of the Sea a collection of poems from various famous writers of centuries gone by. Here are some examples of the altered pages. All pages umarked are ones I did. (clicking on the image will enlarge it enough to read the poetry).
This last image is an artwork by a Newfoundland artist named David Blackwood. He makes incredible aquatints of East coast mythology. The next two spreads are by Nicole, who did an amazing set of pages with cut out waves, swirls and flying fish.
The next three pages are from Lorraine. Lots of layered, textured paper and collage. Nice!
One of Miguel's collage pages.
Here are a few examples from Nicole's book, an interesting dictionary of Western Canadian English originally published in the early 1900s and re-printed in 1977 from the University of Alberta Press.
Nicole's page where I added the Indian head
One of several of Lorraine's pages that had lots of cut out/collage with textured paper.
Miguel's page that reflects well the racist entry of that time...
The back page with pockets for each contributor to add their info.
