Making Altered Books Altered Books

Summit Artspace takes on altered books as art object display

For some people, a book is its content. The contents of it is what matters, and the form — papyrus, Kindle, iPad, bound paper, manuscript roll — is interesting, but not the point. For others, it’s the opposite. The feel and heft of the tome, its smell and texture, the lively images and even the type font and design of end papers — these things become the heady experience. Curator Claudia Berlinski, a senior lecturer at The University of Akron’s Myers School of Art, decided to take on the notion for this particular exhibit.

Berlinski contacted fellow artists and asked them to find a book where the content had significance to them and repurpose it (through gluing, painting, collaging, rubber stamping, cutting, tearing or embellishing) and make it something new. In short, make another kind of art from the object and use its content in some way.

The results are widespread among the 16 artists besides Berlinski herself (who has two works in the exhibit): Charles Beneke, Kate Budd, Daniel Coffield, Bradley Hart, Christopher Hoot, Mark Keffer, James Lenavitt, Beth Lindenberger, M.M. Palmer, John Reddington, Cheryl Shepherd, Emily Vigil, Donna Webb, Tom Webb, Ingrid Westberg and Hui-Chu Ying.

Some people didn’t really use books at all, or at least a traditional sense of books. Ceramist Donna Webb created six quite lovely and eye-catching wall plates on which she imposed snippets of facts about Akron and its history of match-making and its geological connection to the watersheds of both the Mississippi and lake basins into a composite title of “Fire and Water, 2011.” Vigil made a collage of old passports, while Palmer put together a kind of funky garment made from matchbooks and copper chain on a dress form.

Others, though, stuck closer to topic. Beneke shredded a book and glommed the pieces together with polyurethane so that it becomes a wall hanging that flows down the wall. Curator Berlinski took up contemporary disasters from books on the topics — global warming and altered geography and wars — and turned them into emblems of the central ideas. She took an atlas and cut pages so they formed a hole at one pole and spiral shredded it as though out of control at the other. She called the work, appropriately, “A Separate, But Equal, Tragedy.”

Hoot, through an elaborate process, created a visually inventive and amazing accordion book with pop-out pages and cutouts called “Chroma-Kron,” which is a play on our place name. Original pieces from an older Dutch work are on the back and are somewhat gray and lifeless; on the other is a vivid, wonderfully rich colorful work of curious pictures. Fortunately, Hoot has an explanation of the sources and technique used to create it close by for viewers.

The Taboo Art of Altered Books « Altered Art Therapist

Ta·boo–adjective 1.proscribed by society as improper or unacceptable

Improper?! Unacceptable?! Says who?

Look, I am a book person. I have a personal library of over 800 books. My most precious book, a 50th anniversary edition of The Little Prince, has its very own shelf. Heck, I even work at a book store. So why would I of all people choose altered books as my medium? Aren’t books precious, not meant to be written in or torn up or painted on? Isn’t that something every child who holds a book in their hands learns is taboo?

And yet I regularly tear out pages, cut them up, glue them together, paint on them, add collage, soak them in beeswax, cover them in fabric, stamp on them-usually rendering the original book unrecognizable. I would never do this to The Little Prince. But an outdated encyclopedia? A worn children’s book? A book I found in the recycling bin? As far as I am concerned, these are all fair game for altering. I am taking something that was headed for the trash bin and using it as my canvas instead. It goes from being a worthless object to a very precious one. This is a metaphor that anyone can hook in to. Who hasn’t at times felt dusty, outdated, useless? What if we could (and guess what, we can) transform ourselves into an object of beauty and worth? Altering a book is a powerful metaphor for how we can alter ourselves and I find that my clients and students are very responsive to this idea.

The clients I currently work with live in a world filled with rules. An inpatient psychiatric setting by its’ nature is rule bound. Very few decisions are yours to make. When you get up, when you take meds, what you eat, who you share a room with, what time you have to be back on the unit, what you do all day……..the list goes on and on. None of this is unique to where I work by the way, it is just the way this kind of hospital works. Altering a book is a small but powerful way to practice making your own decisions and doing something safe that is also a little risky. It hands some power back to the clients.

My students make altered books to chronicle their training journey. So much personal growth happens on the way to becoming a therapist, and an altered book is the perfect way to capture it. The books allow for multiple and contained expressions of the many issues that come up while in training. Students deal with concepts such as self-disclosure, transference and counter-transference, learning how to use supervision and termination and the books help them to process all the attendant feelings. As a teacher, I got tired of my students doing one-off art pieces in class that they ended up throwing away. With the books, they can do a small art piece in every class and it is contained in a journal form. At the end of the academic year, they have a chronicle of their journey.

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