The Altered Book

Making an Altered Book involves taking an existing book and using it as a foundation for creative expression and exploration. The book artist can take the book apart and put it back together again, recover the book with a new theme or title, tear out pages, put pages in, exploit the existing text by crossing words out or adding them. In other words, with an Altered Book you get to break all the rules and do all the things you were taught never to do to a book when you were in school. At first you might feel like you're doing something wrong and your seventh grade home room teacher is going to track you down and slap you with a hall pass straight to the principle's office. But you'll get over that feeling.

I like to use the altered book in two ways...as a long term journal, something I can work on for a year or so as a place to play and explore themes, and as a collaborative project...I find someone who likes to play with images and text the way I do and we pass the book back and forth to each other, making entries and communicating ideas. When you track down an existing book to use for an altered book project, make sure it's sturdy, stitched and well glued, and the pages aren't brittle. The book needs to hold up to a lot of distress.


Altered Book detail from the Show of Hands Series.
Indigitagio: The Canon of the Fingers. Leather, image transfer on mulberry paper. 6 x 8.