Wednesday, April 6, 2011

Plant Impossible Gardens

These are images from my altered book, "Plant Impossible Gardens". It started with the "flip" book I put on the cover. The flowers are made from book pages and vintage buttons. When I started preparing the book, called "The Dream Maker's Magic" (which looks like a great book... I obviously planned on reading this book before I altered it, but had to let go since I was preparing for the altered book workshop. Another time, perhaps.), all the references to dreams and the flowers I'd already put together made me think of this quote by SARK. It's about taking steps towards your dreams no matter how far out of reach they seem. At least, that's what I can remember it meaning and what it means to me now. I love SARK's books. I don't remember what book this quote was from, but I have found all the ones I've read so inspiring.
Page 2 of the book on top of the book.
Page 3 of the book on top of the book.

This is an insert in the altered book. It began as a part of 3 pieces that I intended to be a "pull out", but the other two pieces kept getting worse and worse the more I did to them, so I will use the pieces I cut up from them in other pieces. I don't even think I originally intended the pull out to be a part of this book, but when the theme came together, it worked so nicely. :)
This last page is still in progress, as are the rest of the pages in the book, but you can see the drawers better in this picture.
I have this book sitting out in my dining room now and it's nice to be reminded of Spring and Dreams. :)

I'll be teaching another Mixed Media Collage Workshop- this time in Pittsburgh!! It will be at Sterling Yoga, which is nicely right around the corner from me. I have a Facebook event up for it. Hope you can make it!! :)



2 comments:

  1. I keep seeing books made into art of some kind & it's all really amazing... I love the blues & greens of the top part of this one!

    But I have a (probably stupid) question: if you can't read the book anymore, what exactly do you DO with it?

    ReplyDelete
  2. Thanks, Karen! I love green and blue together... emotional expression is really what it represents according to the chakras.

    It's not a stupid question. I often wonder what to do with a lot of the art I make and am only just now coming up with good solutions. (It's more about the process of making it that I find valuable.) I have this one in particular displayed in my dining room. It's interactive art. People can flip through and open the drawers. I have another that I can put on a stand originally meant to hold picture frames. This second one is interactive by being able to pull out all kinds of tags from pockets. :) I'm going to teach an intro to collage workshop in Pittsburgh June 12th. We're going to schedule another in September where I'll probably teach intro to altered books (having the first is best before taking the second, but if you can't make it, you can still take the one in Sept. and get some basics in addition to altered book making skills.)

    ReplyDelete