Altered Books

"I think of the poem I wrote in 6th grade, Gray Rainbow.  The main idea of my book is random thought; no page is related to the other.  My favorite part is the karate page because it's very creative and looks well made."  Yianni

The selected text on left is:   I feed Zuric your checks...chex mix.

On right:  Don't be shocked

I have always wanted to do an altered book project and I felt  I had the perfect opportunity with my middle school  class as there are only 14 kids and they come 4 days in a row.   They started by laying out their page; selecting the right words is actually extremely engaging, once you try it you'll understand.   After the text was highlighted, gesso was added to the surrounding areas. This basically makes your pages stronger so it can take all of the mediums that will be applied to it.  Now they had to visualize how to portray the text into images.  

Probably one of my favorite parts of any lesson is reading the artist's thoughts about their creative process.   It gives me so much more appreciation for their work and they too gain such a better understanding of "what it all means".  You can see some excerpts from a student's art reflection card above.  I'll be adding more images to this post later this week.

CONFUSION                                                      artist: Gabriel

text selected:
Her consciousness had separated  from her man.

text selected:
She fired.

Some students decided to work with existing images while others completely blanked out the page and created their own. 

"The main idea of my altered book is confusion.  I tried to make this clear by using strong colors throughout the book and also I think the slashes add a feeling of confusion.  My favorite part of my book is being able to carve away part of the book to continue the line of the shot.  I also realized that I like seeing a picture that's already there and developing my own story from it versus writing a story first and then coming up with the pictures."

                                 WONDER                                                          artist: Joumana

"The main idea of my artwork is imagination.  I was trying to express a feeling of wonder by the use of color and texture.  My favorite part is the colors because I think they express the mood of imagining.  My book makes me think about the past and how when trouble came to me that made me stressful, imagination is the place that I would go to to make me happy." 

                                 Waking Up...To Fall Asleep                                  artist: Kelly

text selected:
...each moment we fall asleep we recognize something to be thankful for.

text selected:
...we need to wake up to find the world a safe place.

"When I was working on my book, I realized that in the past I haven't been appreciative of what I had.  That's why my book interprets the idea of waking up and taking a look at the things around you, appreciate and enjoy them because you might not find them there tomorrow."