Everyone loves to visit artist studios and Alice Balterman's studio, the site of the CBAS study group's May meeting, was no exception. The well-know Cincinnati collage and altered book artist shared examples of her work and suggested some techniques we might use if we wanted to try altering a book. Alice said she saves everything, pictures, postcards, paper, letters, stamps etc. How she keeps track of it all is a mystery but she always finds just what she needs when she needs it.
Two other group members, Ruth and Nikki, shared examples of their work and explained their altered book processes. Nikki is still working on her first book, a fairly large one and suggested that first timers start with a small book. She also suggested sewing or gluing pages together to reduce the number of pages that need altering. Ruth found a Japanese book on dogs and some band-aids in different shapes and colors (some printed with doggie images) in a dollar store. Inspired, she cut and arranged the band-aids into dog shapes and was on her way to creating her humorous altered dog book.
Our three talented book artists, Ruth, Alice and Nikki.
A table with some of the many books Alice has altered. The open book is Ruth's. She has a wonderful sense of humor.
Here, we looked through a selection of books from her library and wrote down titles of books we would like to add to
our libraries.
Noriko Ambe meticulously cuts, and layers hundreds of pieces of Yupo, a synthetic, translucent paper made in Japan, her biggest work having a depth of 1300 sheets of paper. The shapes that emerge call to mind topographical maps, the annual rings of trees, the vastness of space, landscapes, erosion, canyons, aerial views and the passage of time as both subject and process. While many of her works involve unmarked white paper, some involve altering carefully chosen preprinted materials ... because printed matter conveys a message automatically ... such as newspapers, reference books and magazines.
