If you’ve never heard of The Sketchbook Project, it’s a collaborative series of art books created by 5000 artists from around the world. Each person signs up to receive a blank sketchbook, which they fill with whatever they choose in any medium, and then send it back to the organizers. The collected works becomes a travelling show, and eventually a printed catalogue.

If you’re interested in participating, the deadline for sign-up is tomorrow.

I was contacted a few weeks ago by the program co-ordinator, Sarah Maitland, and asked if she could commission me to create a yarn tree for the room. After visiting the location in person I decided it would work better to create groupings of branches around the room rather than a full tree. It would be far too tempting and easy for the kids to take apart the pushpins and yarn so I placed them all out of reach. There are three groups of branches in the room, and each has a mix of red and green leaves.

I worked on the project while perched atop a ladder as well as the cabinets the branches are placed above. Adding the leaves to the ones located above the sink (pictured above) was the trickiest part. I had one foot on the ladder and one foot on the cabinet in a very unsafe position, but it was the only way I could reach high enough to tuck the leaves into the yarn. (Don’t try this at home kids….)

I’m really glad at how this project turned out, and it was fun to work on another yarn tree. Thank you to Nadia Baker for sharing my work and sending the commission my way.

Please read more about the KidSafe Writers’ Room. It’s a project that offers tutoring help and literacy programming to at-risk students in Vancouver, and they’re always looking for volunteers and donations to support the program.

The composition for this one is pretty spare, and I’m struggling with whether to leave it as is or add a little “something”. From what I can tell these types of owls don’t perch in trees, and their environment isn’t very colourful. I decided to share it even though it feels unfinished.

I divided the book into four sections and folded these in alternating directions. I refolded some of the page ends to suggest a rocky (icy?) environment for the owl, and added silver and blue paper as the end pages.

My next step is to frame this one along with the other four. All of these will be on display and available for sale during the Eastside Culture Crawl in November.

Materials used: used book, decorative paper, paper owl, cardboard, white glue, and gel medium.

This is a Long-Eared Owl, and though its ear tufts aren’t actually ears I like the idea that it’s a good listener.

The book was very fun to fold and I love the way the bottom and top sections swirl around one another. With all of these owl books I’ve been folding pages a second or third time after the initial sectioning and folding. It can be a tedious process to crease a three hundred page book and this is how I keep things interesting. It also has resulted in more sculptural work.

For the Long-Eared Owl I returned to making leaves using a paper punch and printed paper to create the suggestion of a tree. I also selected very dramatic Asian-inspired black paper with a gold pattern as the end pages.

There is one more owl altered book to unveil, so stay tuned.

Materials used: book, fancy paper, paper punch, paper owl, cardboard, and white glue.

I completed this one two weeks ago, at the same time as a book with a Long-Eared Owl which I will share later this week. This is a Barn Owl and she is the most elegant of all the owls I worked with in this series. It’s wonderful how different each bird has been from one another, and it’s ensured they are each pretty unique altered books.

I kept things very simple with the composition of this one. I added fancy end-pages with a leaf design in gold which works well with the elegant figure of the Barn Owl. I stayed away from leaves and trees for this book and decided to add a tangle of red thread around the bird’s feet. I was originally trying to create a thread nest but then realized this type of owl doesn’t make them. Nest or not, the thread stayed because it anchors the bird in the book.

I did yet another new way of folding with this one, a mix of two different kinds. It was intended as a horizontal piece but then I decided it worked better as a vertical, and also to mix things up with these.

The owl series is complete and I will be debuting them all in person at the Eastside Culture Crawl in November.

Materials used: book, fancy paper, red thread, paper owl, cardboard, and white glue.

With this one completed now there are four of these books with trees/birds/doorways. I keep thinking about these as the “Birdhouse series” because the trees with doorways are homes for birds.

The small white birds are a set of wood buttons I picked up at Button Button last year. I’d forgotten about them until last week when I was looking for something to work with. I have a few more of these that are in flight, and then four black crow buttons as well.

I realized after finishing this one I don’t enjoy working on this series of books as much as I do the owls. The process isn’t as creative because I’m using a lot of the same elements and ways of making them. I think this may be why I stopped working on this series when I first started it last year.

I’m sure I can find a way to make the process more interesting…

Materials used: book, bird buttons, inkjet print of my photo, resistors, rubber stamp and ink, white glue, and gel medium.

With this book I began with an exploration of a different way of folding the pages rather than deciding on the composition I would work towards. It was challenging to work with three different directions of folds but the end result is a fascinating pattern and shape to the book.

I left Mr. Horned Owl (the Great) attached to his branch and decided he needed to be sitting majestically in a tree. I rolled a few pages to give him something to rest on and suggest the shape of a tree. The leaves were the final touch that I really wasn’t sure was going to turn out as well as it has. These are made with a leaf-shaped paper punch and I’ve used them to add colour but keep the focus on the owl.

I’m going to keep exploring the subject of owls for a few more books, at least until I run out of the birds. To keep things interesting I’ve set myself the challenge of playing with new ways of folding the books as I do them.

Materials used: book, patterned paper, leaf-shaped paper punch, white glue, and gel medium.

I actually started this series back in March 2010 when I created two niche cut books using imagery of trees and bird-related items. All are made from books that are blank inside and out, because they were publisher mockups for the hardcover version of Harry Potter novels. My friend Siobhan saved them from the bin and gifted them to me for altering.

I’m going to continue to create these using similar elements: a doorway cut into a tree with items related to birds on the inside, and a design printed along the edges of the closed pages. While I really like the use of small twigs incorporated into the previous two books in this series, having them makes it difficult to store/ship the work because they stick out and are delicate.

Materials used: blank book, ink jet print of photo, transparent egg, gesso, book page scraps, wine cork, rubber stamp & ink, and gel medium.

I’m continuing to use the birds cut from the same encyclopedia as the ones I’ve used in the recycled collages I shared previously. There is a section on owls I’ve been saving and now at least some of these are going to show up in altered books.

As always I’m experimenting with how I work with the books. With this one I’ve folded the pages inward towards the spine but done the middle section at a different level. I wanted to play with varying how I fold the pages rather than keeping things the same throughout the book.

This is the first of two altered books I’ve completed this week. I’ll share the other tomorrow.

Materials used: book, card stock, paper owl, hand-cut leaves, wine cork (which you can’t see), and white glue.

Normally I follow the same pattern of folding the pages through out a book but with these two the folds are irregular and create a ripple effect through the book. It’s an interesting technique, but it doesn’t entirely work for me. I need to experiment further to figure out how to do this better.

I may end up removing the covers from these books to use in a collage, and then turn these into a wall piece. I like the idea of the shaped pages rippling from one book to the other.

Check out the work of Issac Salazar for advanced book page folding.

I was drawn to the elegant simplicity of these book bursts, which are made from cutting a book into sections and then folding the pages. I chose a fairly thick book so it took quite a long time to do all that folding.

Each one is done in a slightly different way, and it’s interesting to see the patterns and texture that emerge in each. I’m going to experiment a bit more with something different again with the remaining section of the book.

It feels really good to be exploring books in a different way than usual and I’m curious to see where this will lead.

The base for this collage is the cover of a wooden cake box originally from a Hotel in Germany. I picked it up at Value Village and am saving the rest of the box for a future mixed media piece.

With the hummingbirds I decided to make yet further explorations into creating what I wanted by cutting the shapes from paper. This time the usual clouds, but also leaves, branches, and a nest for Mrs. Hummingbird. The wood was first layered with strips of sewing pattern paper to tone down, but not hide the existing text.

I left the original metal hardware on the box lid, as you can see at the corners and part of the latch on the bottom edge. I like trying to incorporate as much of the original details of these found materials as I can. I hope I can source more wooden boxes from Value Village before I run out of what I have.

Materials used: wooden box lid, security envelopes, book page scraps, sewing pattern paper, and paper birds.

Normally with the books I use in my altered book work the cover of the books ends up hidden away. This one was much too nice to not feature in a composition and so it’s ended up as the background for this collage.

I chose the crane for this because it was the first thing I came across when I opened the bird encyclopedia to select a bird. It seemed like the perfect one to go with the colours and flower motif. I decided to continue with the paper waves because the crane is also a wading bird.

I sorted through the pile of saved envelopes looking for something that would go well with the patterns on the cover but wasn’t the usual blues of security envelopes. I found one with this grey pattern that feels very Japanese, and it ended up being the perfect thing.

Materials used: book cover, thread, paper bird, book page scraps, security envelopes, and gel medium.

The canvas for this collage is the cover of a wooden box, the rest of which I used earlier this year in another mixed media assemblage piece. The Japanese characters are part of the original cover design and I tried to incorporate them into the composition because they’re lovely.

It was fun to try different things with the same materials. So far I’ve mostly been making clouds with the scrap book pages and security envelopes, but this time it made more sense to reference water because these are shore birds.

The finished artwork feels very Japanese, and I love how beautifully all the elements come together.

Materials used: sewing pattern paper, security envelopes, book pages, paper birds, wooden box lid, and gel medium.

This is part of a series of collages I’m creating as a warm up. I’ve taken most of the summer off from making things and it feels good to get back to it.

As mentioned previously, I’m tentatively calling this series, “Put a Bird on it”, as each one will be a whimsical composition containing birds. They all come from the same bird book I found at Value Village and each collage contains upcycled security envelopes, scrap book pages and thread. I’ve decided to use both found wood boxes and book covers as the “canvas” for these.

Even though it’s still months away my efforts in producing new work is in preparation for the Eastside Culture Crawl in November. Stay tuned for more new work.

When these are hung together the wolf will flow around them, from the left side to underneath them. He really completes the whole picture. I decided to treat this more as an installation piece to better tell the story, and I’m saving the final view of everything together for the show.

The piglets I’ve used are toys I bought from Michael’s art supplies, which is not a store I normally visit, but I figured they carried this sort of thing. I painted two of the pigs and left one of them clean and pink so they would look different from each other even though they are exactly the same. The book houses are covered in raffia, dried stems from a lemon balm plant, and paper I hand cut to look like bricks. A special thank you to Horst for cutting the corners off the books with his bandsaw and making them look like houses.

Materials used: three books, raffia, dried lemon balm stems, Japanese paper, white card stock, three plastic pigs, acrylic paint, white glue, and gel medium.

The presentation was hilarious because of Felice’s deadpan commentary, but it was also inspiring to hear about how much Booklyn does to nurture and promote their artists. Book arts is alive and well in Brooklyn, and some day I must visit their collection.

Check out the Brooklyn web site to view more of their amazing artist books.

This particular book started out as a sample for the altered book class I taught a few weeks ago. It’s a very different book than what I’ve used previously because it’s a children’s storybook with colour illustrations and very large print.

Each page was folded, tucked back into the centre of the book and glued into place. It then became a very clunky form I’m not entirely happy with, and the shape felt difficult to work with as well. So I decided this needed flowers and more colour.

I started making flowers using a cherry blossom punch with red paper and attached each one with a straight pin. The different coloured balls in the centre of each flower are the pearlized heads of the pins, and they seem to increase the whimsy of the piece. With so much red between the flowers and end pages I decided it was a bit overkill and toned it down the addition of white flowers.

I did a similar process last year at this time – punching tiny flowers from paper in an effort to call forth the real thing and kick off spring. Between the flowers, end pages, and the illustrations in the book this is the most eye-blasting altered book I’ve created yet. Happy Spring!

Materials used: book, paper, rubber stamp & ink, straight pins, and gel medium.

My initial thoughts around the work I plan to create is to combine altered books with my figurative photography. On Tuesday I sat down in the studio to explore some of the ideas I have about bringing these two mediums together.

I want to combine photo-based figures with found objects within a book. I plan to shoot new material (read: models) to use in these fairy tale themed books, and first steps involved figuring out how best to photograph the models for what I need. The book pictured here was an exploration of materials because I wasn’t sure what format the final output of the photo-based figure should take. I played around with an inkjet print on plain paper and then pulled out a photographic print to work with.

The photo I used in this was a self portrait I shot down at Kits beach two years ago. I purposely did not worry too much about composition or selection of materials with this mixing of media because I just wanted to explore the idea. My biggest concern was finding a print material for the photo-figure that would not be difficult to cut out, and it looks like photo paper works just fine.

I’m excited by this new work and can’t wait to see where this series will go.

Materials used: book, tissue paper, small stones, small shells, photograph, wood tiles, and gel medium.

I don’t feel I do this random style of composition well, so I was finding it tricky to know when to stop layering things. It’s just on the edge of having too many things going on and becoming a mess. But I love the papers overlapping and the colours are fun.

As with the previous collage pieces, this is available for purchase through my Etsy shop or in person.

This one is my favorite of the three because I was able to retain some of the previous work with simple additions of Japanese paper and leaves. The face is a statue I photographed in the Egyptian museum in Berlin combined with a photo of lily pads. It’s a style of digital collage I haven’t done in ages (and no longer like).

With this second collage I decided to give it a simple tweak by adding clouds made from book pages and security envelopes. I’ve always like some part of this collage but felt it was more of an experiment than something representative of my “style”. Now I like it much better.

It also ties in nicely with the larger collage I made a few weeks ago with airships (which is sold now, by the way).

The collages are made on wooden cradle frames ready to hang, and are both available for sale through Etsy (and in person).

I continued using the same materials in this one because I’ve been enjoying figuring out different ways to mix the book page scraps and security envelopes. This time I cut the paper into leaf shapes and placed them around part of the circle in a messy swirl as if they’re blowing in the wind.

I found this particular type of thread difficult to glue down because it kept sticking to the brush of gel medium instead of the paper. I decided to use it in the composition as a flight path for the butterflies to follow.

Materials used: wood, sewing pattern paper, acetate butterflies, cotton thread, book page scraps, security envelopes, and gel medium.

As always this collage is listed for sale in both my Etsy and Cargoh shops.

Paul Wong has put together a site-specific installation/performance work in room 103 of the Waldorf Hotel. The room is covered floor to ceiling, windows, furniture, bathroom and all, in bedsheets collected for charities by an activist named Karen.

Karen is back at The Hotel from her most-recent goodwill missions around the globe. Karen will be back at it collecting and recycling the hotel sheets and linens and repurposing them for worthy causes. A well-meaning activist, Karen has contributed our used bedding to numerous charities in Vancouver and around the world, including the homeless, the destitute in the Downtown Eastside and Surrey, and to victims of natural disasters in Haiti and Pakistan.

Boris and I visited the site on Friday before (delicious) dinner downstairs at Nuba. I’d been curious to see this installation but after seeing it in person I’m not really sure how I feel about it.

I liked the aesthetics of the installation, with every surface of the room taken over by the sheets it became this wonderful cocooned space away from the noise of the rest of the hotel. The part I didn’t like was the video projection on the back wall showing the character of Karen going about her work and talking with visitors from what I guess was a previous performance. I felt it took away from the experience to watch her secondhand instead of interacting with Karen in person. But I guess it’s not possible for her to be on site all the time.

Go see it for yourself if you get the chance. Karen’s Room is open 5 to 9 pm, seven days a week, and will be on site at the Waldorf Hotel until Feb. 11, 2011.

These three goals came together with the collage I finished yesterday.

I started out wanting to make a collage using scraps of pages leftover from completed altered books and it evolved into a lovely finished piece with 3D objects, repurposed security envelopes, and part of a book cover cut from this altered book. I used the inside of a shallow wooden box as both canvas and frame.

Quite a few of these materials were items given to me by friends who no longer had a use for them. I’m really glad I could repurpose them into art.

Materials used: wooden box, partial book cover, scraps of book pages, security envelopes, wooden bobbins, silk thread, two paper birds, gesso, glue, and gel medium.

If you’re interested in this piece I’ve already listed it for sale in my Etsy shop. I’ve priced it in a slightly different way than the altered books because I view this as an experiment and want to keep this in an affordable price range.

I picked it up again this week and decided to follow the same theme of birds, book pages, and thread from the previous two collages. I broke up the background image with pieces of book pages and tried to treat both as texture. The thread and bits of scrap paper add a bit more colour and give the collage some flow from one bird to another.

This is the largest collage I’ve ever created. It’s challenging to work larger and I think I prefer making smaller pieces because most of the materials I have to work with are small scale.

Materials used: scrap book pages, red thread, paper birds, rubber stamp & ink, origami paper, and gel medium.