Altered Books

Altered state.

State of grace.

Gracefully certain that
no preconceived notion
was set into motion.

I’m free--
free to create
an altered state
of books and of pages
in several stages:

Gather, cut, paste,
frumage, and collage.



Page


by


page.


2008

I took a course at the art museum called Crazy Collage that was taught by Mimi Shapiro. Although a collage can be anything, our projects were altered books. In other words, we took perfectly good books and defaced them by pasting pictures from magazines, photos, and trinkets on their pages. OR we made the books more interesting, depending on your viewpoint. I found it to be fun and very freeing because there was no predetermined endpoint. I wrote this poem on the way back from Beachwood, NJ after talking to an artist about creativity.