Day 2, February 25th

The second day of Altered Books: Silhouettes, Seeds, and re-Sizing our goals


All began the day continuing to work on their Cornell shadowbox book.  More time was needed than I think we all originally thought!  


KARA WALKER GOLDEN BOOK:
The next book introduced was based on the artwork of Kara Walker and another young book artist I found online, Rachael Ashe.  I find Kara Walker's work to be inspiring and great conversations generated when students begin to grasp her concepts.   Rachael Ashe had a beautiful concept within a blank book of combining silhouettes with imagery; the silhouettes were cut out of one page to create a window of sorts to the imagery on the next page.  


The web pages I used as a resource for the two artists' work are:
http://www.pbs.org/art21/artists/kara-walker
http://rachaelashe.com/


Each teacher took the ideas of Kara Walker and Rachael Ashe and created their own story through windows and silhouettes to tell.  More complete images of these pieces to come!


WATERCOLOR & MASKING FLUID MANIPULATION:
As teachers worked on their Walker/Ashe book design, there was a break to demonstrate to them a couple of different other ways to work with bookbinding and found media.  


Grocery sacks were cut and folded into accordion fold pocket books.  One teacher re-covered her paper bag with an old fabric pattern - when she added her black and gray small patterns to it later, it worked out well.  Another teacher was inspired by Mexican symbols and patterns for her images and book.  Her accordion was later covered with fabric and thin lines of sting in the colors of the Mexican flag.  When her piece was finished, it felt whimsical and fluid.


How the imagery for in the books were created:
Small 3" x 4" pieces of paper were: brushed with masking fluid designs; painted over with a light color of watercolor media (I used a gray tone);when dry, painted again with another masking fluid design; when masking fluid layer #2 was dry, a dark watercolor was painted over top (I used black).  After all was dry, the masking fluid was removed to reveal a layered surface design.  These then fit into our paper-bag pocket accordion book!  Voila!

To finish out the day, we also created simplified pamphlet books that had a cover of seed packets.  And, we put finishing touches on our Cornell book... whew!  The lessons I had planned for the day were not all covered as we were having so much fun with everything else!!! More to come (and finish) on the 26th!