SVHS ART
Mr. Anderson's Classes
  • 3D Design
    • Sketchbook Cover
    • Setting Up your Weebly >
      • Turn in your work
      • Sample Bio Page
      • Documenting Artwork
    • Plates
    • Pottery : Bowls
    • Mugs
    • Shrunken Heads
    • Cardboard Sculpture
    • Upcycled Magazine Pottery
    • Totem Poles
    • Figurative Sculpture
    • Tea set
    • Fabric Monsters
    • Busts
    • Environmental Art
  • Art I
    • Sketchbook Cover
    • Setting Up your Weebly >
      • Turning in your work
      • Sample Bio Page
      • Documenting Artwork
    • Shape & Space
    • Drawing: The Use of Line
    • Drawing: Shading & Spheres >
      • Silverware Value Study
    • Drawing: Pen & Ink
    • Self Portrait
    • Perspective City
    • Painting >
      • Surrealist Landscape
    • Lino Cut Portrait
    • Clay Techniques: Candle Holder
    • Endangered Species with WC
    • Pattern
    • Identity Art Piece
    • Social Issue Art Piece
  • AP Art
    • Summer Assignment
    • Setting Up your Weebly >
      • Turning in your weebly to goole classroom
      • Sample Bio Page
      • Documenting Artwork
    • Wire Sculpture
    • Altered Books
  • The Art of Tattoo

Altered Books

Altered books is an art form in which existing books are reworked into works of art, often manifests in a variety of ways. The existing book becomes the canvas for the new ideas and images. Sometimes words or images from the book are retained as a part of the altering. At other times it is the books is entirely obscured to become a new idea totally.
Altered books are actually an old way of recycling. In the 11th Century Italian monks recycled old manuscripts written on vellum by scraping off the ink and adding new text and illustrations on top of the old. This was known as "Palimpsest."
In the late 19th century people used old books as a sort of scrapbook, pasting on its pages the ephemera from their society including magazine images, personal recipes, and family pictures. This is "Grangerism", a Victorian practice of illustrating a particular book with engravings torn from other books.

Today artists are exploring the form of the book along with its substance. Existing images and text become something entirely new. Tom Phillips' Humament is one of the first contemporary examples of this art. By covering, cutting, and changing the structure, altered books run the gamut from books that have become shrines to books that are transformed into colorful images totally unrelated to their origins.
Your Mission:

Find a Book you want to use (From home, Library or me)
Make a plan
​Make something cool!
Proudly powered by Weebly