Yesterday I posted pictures and information about the altered book I've been working on for an upcoming show I've been invited to participate in, entitled A Novel Idea. I also said that I'm open to comments and feedback since I've never worked with this medium before, and since I have until mid-November before I need to submit the finished piece.
One question I was asked by another artist was what the book looks like open in/near the middle of the book. Shown above is a picture of it as per her question.
The advantage of showing it as an open book, with many pages already turned, is that it's more organic on both the left and right sides.
Below is a picture of it closed so the altered front cover can be seen, as well as detail pictures of how the pages flow out of the closed "book."
The advantage of showing it as a closed book is that I can do a lot more with the front cover if I would like to, but the disadvantage is that there are now 28+ pages instead of 575 pages, so there's a lot of empty space in between the closed cover. I think I'd prefer not to show it closed.
Something that I still want to do with this altered book is find a place to use text from the original book's dedication: "to a creative space" somewhere in the book. It doesn't need to be seen by the viewer. It only needs to be somewhere, even if I'm the only one who knows it's there. I'm just not sure where.
I also forgot to say yesterday that taking bookbinding classes during my undergraduate studies at Philadelphia College of Art (now the University of the Arts) were very useful in understanding how I could alter this book, even 34 years later.
