Altered Book Workshop

Last month, my friend Alice and I took ourselves along to an Altered Book Workshop, here in Sheffield hosted by the Creative Action Network. The idea behind the workshop was to explore the ways in which old or unwanted books can be transformed into art objects and sculptures. Anyone who reads this blog (and particularly has read the posts on the book-sculptures of  Isaac Salazar and Brian Dettmer) will know that I am interested in the material form of books and their creative potentialities. With this workshop just on the doorstep, it seemed like too good an opportunity to pass up! ...Time to get involved and have a go myself!

Charlie Hill, a Sheffield-based mixed media artist, was running the workshop and she began by showing us her own work in altered books as well as work by other altered book artists. Charlie introduced us to two artists in particular for inspiration.

The first was Su Blackwell (who incidentally is from Sheffield!). Her book-sculptures create intricate and complex scenes, often from the realms of a fairy tales and folklore. They really are beautiful delicate installation pieces - See for yourself:

Above: Top Left: 'The Extasie' (2006);

Bottom Left: 'The Baron in the Trees' (2011); Right: 'Hope' (2009)

What I wouldn't give to own one! ...and if you'd like to see more, there is a full gallery on her website.


The second artist was Nicholas Jones, an Australian sculpture. His work is much more about the the ways in which the pages of books can be folded or cut into in order to create new shapes and designs:

Above: Top Left, Bottom Left and Centre are taken from Jones'

'The Tower of Learning' exhibition at Pablo Fanque, Sydney, 2008;

Top right: 'The Blue Wave'; and Bottom Right comes from

'The Garden of Forking Paths' exhibition at Geelong Gallery, Victoria, 2009.

And if you'd like to see more of Nicholas Jones' work, he also has a gallery on his website.

Obviously, seeing these artists works, we had a lot to wonder at! Though I warn you now, this was a beginner's workshop, so don't expect to much! In the workshop, we learnt mostly about the different techniques for folding in order to create new shapes, revisioning the book as it were

This was my greatest achievement for the day, which I've decided to call 'leaves', playing on the pun of the pages themselves being leaves (homage to Mark Z. Danielewski, of course!):








And this is part of the process of folding, created by my friend Alice.







Dan Williamson was also at the workshop and he created three really good pieces, all of which can be seen on his lovely photo blog: 'This is not a refuge', 'donkey cabbages', and 'The Spring and the Egg'.

All in all, I really enjoyed the day. It made a nice change to be more creative!