In today's workshop I explored ideas of ‘the readymade’ and looking at artwork that can be
created by responding to an existing object/image. I engaged with a collection of altered books & developed my own ideas for an altered book through a range of artists book techniques.
The books created will be displayed in the Learning Resource Centre in Bournemouth & Poole College as an exhibition for World Book Day.
Below is some research I did on Altered Books...
On the ‘Readymade’:
A Humement
Here are some images I found of some altered books on Pinterest which I found really interesting. Especially the first one. I took inspiration from this for my altered book further down the page.
Below are some images of a collection of altered books that I found interesting.
I decided to reconstruct my book and also to add to one of them from the other. Choosing a music book related to the research into emotions and mental health I had done. I found that music really helps with my mental health and have found that it helps with other peoples too.
I also chose this old painting book due to its vintage feel and the colour inside relating back to my colour theory.
I scanned in a section from one of the pages of the music book. It was a section that was different chords; one set of chords was for love, one for comedy and one for anger. I felt this was very fitting with my research into emotions and mental health. Making a solar etching plate using the solar etching process I had undergone in the Dada collage experiments I set to with some more experimenting.
Once the Solar etching plate was complete and inked up ready to print with, I chose pages of the painting book and printed the musical notes onto the paintings that I quite liked.
The way the musical notes show faintly over each image in the book is almost ghostly and gives a sense of bringing music and painting together as one. It makes the images timeless by combining the two elements, art and music.
Each image brings about a different emotion for me and the most successful of these in portraying this is the middle image of the ones above; of the ladies face and the one to the right of the trees. They bring visualisation to the music and the images bring the music to life.
Taking my Dada collage solar etching plate and the musical notes etching plate I wanted to try printing them over each other and bring them into one. This worked really well on canvas material. The layering works really well. It brings a vintage feel to the work and incorporating the masked collage and the meaning behind this being people wear masks, together with music has inspired me to take this further by trying the solar etching plates printed onto different textures and colours to see what message each image says.
Another altered book I completed was the taking the music notes and looking at structure. Music has structure to it when it is created and I wanted to bring this to life by creating a physical structure out of the music book itself. I also really like the idea of changing one thing and making it look like something else. I felt looking at this book that I had now turned it into a piano and each turned and folded page was like the key on a piano.
BEFORE
AFTER
To take the Altered Books method further, I would love to do a whole series of music books, and try and see how I could structure each one to look like a musical instrument. This would be quite hard I suspect but something that would be very fun at the same time!
Another aspect I would love to push further and explore, is bringing music and painting together. Bringing the senses together and exploring this. Possibly experiment by listening to different songs and seeing where a paintbrush could take me. The environment we experience influences our creative process. When we experience variations in lighting, colours on the walls, different smells, and different types of sounds, they evoke different feelings within us and in turn these sensory experiences invade our creative process. This fascinates me. Interestingly enough, many art forms use similar descriptive terms across art disciplines. Music, painting, drama and architecture use terms such as repetition, variety, intensity, rhythm, dialogue, balance, unity and so on. Some people can actually hear colour, therefore they are easily influenced by music. I would love to explore this further as I know that music and art can be healing. Looking into my future of being an Art Therapist, this is something I will concentrate heavily on and I really can't wait. To explore how music making can help people to express their emotions, to experiment with the senses to create a sensory driven piece would be amazing.
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