Altered book art

What it is

Taking scissors and glue to a real book feels almost transgressive, which is exactly why altered book art has the charge it does. You are repurposing an object built to be read into a canvas, and the original text becomes raw material rather than something to be preserved.

Altered book art is the practice of transforming an existing book, usually an old, unwanted, or damaged one, into a new work of art by cutting, painting, folding, collaging, and otherwise reworking its pages. The book stops being something to read and becomes the structure and surface for creation. Pages get painted over, cut into, glued together, turned into pockets or windows, layered with collage, until the original volume is reborn as a three-dimensional art object, a visual journal, or a sculptural piece.

The appeal lies partly in the constraint and partly in the materials. Starting with an existing book gives you a ready-made structure, pages, a spine, a cover, and an existing layer of printed text and images to work with, react against, or partially reveal. Many artists leave fragments of the original words showing, creating a dialogue between the old text and the new art. The raw material costs almost nothing, charity shops and library sales sell unwanted hardbacks for a euro or less, which removes any fear of "wasting" expensive supplies.

The practice runs in several distinct directions. Some people create elaborate altered journals, working into the book over months as a kind of diary. Others do "book sculpture", cutting and folding pages into three-dimensional forms. Blackout or found poetry, where you obscure most of a page to leave only chosen words visible, is a quieter literary cousin of the same impulse.

The one practical hurdle is that books are not designed to take wet media. Thin paper buckles and tears under paint and glue, so altered book artists often gesso the pages first to create a sturdier surface, or glue several pages together to make a stronger base that can hold heavier work.