Rainbow's End



The concept of Altered Books is that an artist uses an existing hardback used book as a canvas on which to work.
There are no rules....you can incorporate the words on the page as part of your design...or not. You can use the title and theme of the book...or not. You can add, subtract, change, ALTER as you see fit. "Rainbow's End" was part of a group project where 10 artists each started an Altered Book, set up guidelines for its progression and rotated the books to each other until all had completed at least two or more pages in each book. In this case "Rainbow's End" was the original title of the book, a mystery novel.

Stained Glass



This is another in the Altered Books Series. "Stained Glass" is the original title. It is a novel by WM. F. Buckley that takes place in Post WWII Europe.

Transitions: Finding Gold



This Altered book was originally a biography about Golda Mier. The theme for the altered version was about going through transitions in life and finally "Finding Gold".  

Banned Book/The Crucible



This was part of a "banned book" show sponsored by the Kirkland Public Library (King County, WA.).
Approximately 20 artists were invited to choose a book from a list of books which had been banned or challenged in the last 30 years by various schools and communities in the United States and alter it in such a way that it would be impossible for the reader to access its pages. I chose "The Crucible" by Arthur Miller, a play about the events surrounding the Salem witch trials of 1692 which illustrates how destructive fear, paranoia and ignorance can be.

I did a little research, and in the Boston Library archives I found the ORIGINAL HAND WRITTEN DOCUMENTS from the Salem Witch Trials! It was all there...The depositions, the "confessions, the sentences, the death warrants, all of it. Everything is gracefully written with quill pen and ink on parchment with old English spellings. At first glance, they were beautiful antique manuscripts, but when I tried to read them, I realized the horror that was spelled out on those pages. These characters were real people, not fictional.

For my altered version of the book, I used copies of these original documents. The background on the cover is the death warrant for Sarah Good, Rebeca Nurse and several others. Documents on the base include Samuel Paris's deposition, the order from the County of Essex to the Sheriff George Cronin to Commence the proceedings (trials) and a map of Salem Village in 1692.There is also part of a document from the McCarthy hearings ("the red scare") of the 1950's, since it was Arthur Miller's intent to draw a parallel between the two events.

The book is shown on a burn pile with a note card containing the words of members of  a  Harrisburg Pennsylvania PTA in 1982 suggesting in rather inflammatory language that the book be banned from the curriculum!