Larry Hnetka Goes HMmmm

I’ve been a bit lax in posting these past two weeks. I’ve been working on an altered book as a present for my friend Easter’s birthday.

She chose “La Dolce Vita” as the theme for her party (can’t have a party without a good theme now can you?).

She managed to get me to Photoshop her invitation. Here’s the original photo with Sophie Loren and Jayne Mansfield and my PhotoShopped one.

[Click on photo for larger version.]

From that altered picture, I took on the ambitious task of making an altered book as a present. Not familiar with altered books? Generally, an altered book is best described as mixed media artwork.

The International Society of Altered Book Artists (ISABA) gives this definition: “It is any book, old or new that has been recycled by creative means into a work of art. They can be … rebound, painted, cut, burned, folded, added to, collaged in, gold-leafed, rubber stamped, drilled or otherwise adorned …”

Basically, you take a book (hardcover works best) and alter it by pasting pages together, by inserting your own text, pictures, graphics and ephemera. In essence, you’re using the original hardcover book as the form to create a piece of art containing pages.

Here’s an example of a double page spread from an altered book found on the ISABA’s member gallery:

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From the ISABA gallery, this an an example of what two pages from an altered book might look like.

I haven’t photographed the finished book I made but here are some more PhotoShop images I did for the book.

[Click on the photos for a larger version]

This entry was posted on Wednesday, April 4th, 2007 at 2:16:21 PM and is filed under CREATIVE. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.