The Stacks
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Time Travelling with Rare Print Materials
So back in January my fellow student staffer at Bruce Peel Special Collections, Michaela Morrow, and I had the privilege and delight to lead a Peel Workshop of our own design, titled Time Travelling with Rare Print Materials. Basically it was a chance for us to pull an absolute treasure trove of materials from the collection, share them with friends and patrons, and – perhaps the biggest bonus to me – spend some extra time studying them ourselves.
And what a trove it was…
An ever widening path of destruction…
…but also a path of creation?
Today I want to share about an altered book that I did not personally alter but for which I am nonetheless somewhat to blame… a book being altered because I gave someone the idea to.…
An extraordinary correspondance, unbound
In anticipation of Chapter 13 of the When Words Collide festival, and an opportunity to display and discuss some examples of altered book art while I’m there, I wanted to post a little post about a work I made based off of one of my favourite books, Griffin & Sabine by Nick Bantock…
Puck's Arena
My introduction to artist’s books, and altered books in particular, started with an undergraduate field trip to the Bruce Peel Special Collections at the University of Alberta, and one work in particular.
At first glance, it seems innocuous enough, perhaps even a bit boring or common? But if there was ever a time to apply the broader advice to not judge a book by its cover, this would be it.
Frankensteining Frankenstein
At the When Words Collide festival in 2021, towards the end of a workshop on Altered Books, I mentioned that the next project I was pondering was something to do with Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, riffing off the central theme of the story to assemble a copy of the book made up of parts of different editions.
My small but mighty audience was intrigued, and we decided to plan a workshop around that idea for WWC 2022…
Art From The Unknown
Welcome to any visitors who are arriving here from the Art from the Unknown virtual exhibit!
And if you ended up here first, I encourage you to go check out the Art of the Unknown, a virtual gallery sponsored by Rachel Notley and the NDP Caucus here in Alberta, in which I have the privilege and pleasure of being included for my dystopian altered book series.
Video: An Introduction to Altered Books
Altered Books: When Your Finished Book Becomes Another Artist’s Raw Materials is the second of two session that I had the opportunity to present at this past weekend’s When Words Collide festival for readers and writers.
I think it is important to point out that the description in the conference program for this session starts with a trigger warning that I highlight again here:
Trigger Warning: This presentation may contain content disturbing to some readers, authors, and booklovers!
Video: The Book as Object, Sculpture, & Performance
This past weekend, I had the joy and honour of sharing an encore presentation of The Book as Object, Sculpture, & Performance at the When Words Collide festival for readers and writers. I presented this session for the first time back in 2019 in Calgary, Alberta, when the conference was still live. Getting to present it again online, this time as part of the 2021 virtual conference, means I now have a video record… well, of this one performance of it at least!
Who needs books when…
Content Warning: This post includes images of a book being physically altered, by which I mean getting cut up. Also #spoilers.
So this weekend my latest altered book project came together, the third in a series based on dystopic novels with themes relating to reading, censorship, and language.
This time the subject of my experimentation was Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World, one of my favourite science fiction novels of all time…
Is Big Brother watching?
Content Warning: The following post describes and shows a book being physically altered.
In one of my earlier contributions to the Butterflies & Aliens Library, I shared the process of creating my first altered book project, Spark Unnecessary, using Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451 as the source work. Since completing that project back in 2017, I’d been pondering other altered books projects based around themes of dystopia and censorship, slowly gathering up materials and ideas.
Spark Unnecessary
Back in November 2017, I created my first piece of book art, an altered book project that I titled Spark Unnecessary, based on a copy of Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451.
This is the story of that project.
