Don't throw those forlorn, dust-collecting hardcover novels in the trash or ship them off to the thrift store, says Charlotte Schuld. Instead transform them into a page turner with a new story to tell.
Schuld, an artist and retired teacher, will lead a four-week Altered Book Workshop at ArtReach St. Croix in Stillwater in which she will teach participants how to take an existing book and sculpt it into a two- or three-dimensional personal work of art. The workshop begins Monday and runs through April 9.
"The beauty is that you don't have to be an artist. You don't have to be able to draw to do this," said Schuld, of Stillwater. "If you can glue, cut and assemble things, you can put together something really remarkable."
With the snip of a page here, a collage there and any number of alterations in between, altered book artists fill a book's inside pages with designs, images and words using common everyday items such as postcards, maps, photographs and wrapping paper. Sometimes they cut out portions of pages from the book, fold others into pockets to hold objects such as rocks, favorite trinkets and knickknacks, or glue them together and use utility knives to create hollowed out spaces. Invariably, some pages are removed so the book maintains the integrity of its binding.
"We don't ruin the binding," Schuld said. "It still looks like a book when it is closed."
For many, the new creations become visual journals or diaries or personal sketchbooks, she said.
In one exercise, Schuld has students circle a random word on every third line of a page and paint over the rest of them. Then she has them use the circled words to create a poem.
"It brings the creative writer out in a person," she said. "These books that would have ended up in the landfill become a vehicle for powerful self-expression."
