Different Examples of Book Art

The world of Book Arts is vast with many different methods and materials, probably more than I could ever know of. With so many options and methods out there, it can seem overwhelming finding where to start, so I'm going to share a few different methods and types of book art that I have learned.

Altered Book Art

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Altered book art is self explanatory: it involves using a previously made book (either already owned or found at a thrift/used book store), and altering it in some way. This process is very open to creativity, and anything goes as long as you're using the original sourced book in some way. For the example on the left, I only altered the book by painting the cover with acrylic. I chose this method since the book was a gift to my mom, and I wanted the pages to be readable since it is one of her (and my) favorite books. For the book on the right, I used a method called "excavation", which involves cutting out parts of the pages of the book with an x-acto knife. This method was much more invasive as it involved removing quite a few pages, gluing sections of pages together, cutting out negative space, and painting the remaining surface area.

Sculptural Book

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Sculptural books are another vast category under the wing of book arts. Methods of sculptural book art can include paper mache out of book pages, altering a book to make a 3D diorama, or even creating a pop-up book. For my sculptural book, I decided to start with raw materials to create my own book that opened to be a library. I first made the hardcover book case with book board and book cloth, then built the inside with additional book board. I decided to cover all the surfaces inside the sculpture with printed pages that are excerpts from different literature to push the idea of the sculpture being a book itself. While the mini library on the left mostly consists of cardboard pieces glued in to look like books, there are actually five mini books that can be taken out and read. They each have a different quote about books or reading in them.

While my book sculpture is recognizably a book, there are many ways of making a sculptural book that push the boundaries of the concept of books.

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  by Angela Lorenze

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In "Maxims by the Yard: Some in Meter", artist Angela Lorenze created a sculptural book by printing different maxims on ribbon and adding it to a spool. The ribbon can then be unspooled and read like a book. This is just one example of the endless possibilities of sculptural book art.

Artists' Books

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Arguably, any of the above mentioned methods of book art can classify as an Artist's book. Personally I prefer to differentiate between them by thinking of Artists' books as fully original content rather than an alteration. They can be made from any material and about whatever topic the artist chooses. For my artist's book, I created it all with raw materials, cut and painted each page, and hand bound the pages together. I combined the coptic stitch method (tutorial) with the case bound method to bind my books, and created my own book cloth from cotton fabric and HeatNBond from the fabric store (video tutorial on how to make book cloth). Although mine was fully hand made, artists' books can also be created digitally then printed and crafted together that way. This makes it easier to create multiple editions of a book.

The world of book arts is vast and worth exploring! It is one type of art that is open to nearly any media and really allows the artist full creativity and expression. While these are just a few examples, there are many different methods and ways of creating book art, one just has to experiment.