“The Textbook”-Studio Book Project


My altered book project is a project dedicated to keeping creative rebellion alive. Sounds a bit dramatic but that’s how I would describe it in simple terms. I had tons of books to choose from but it was important that I didn’t like the book because I am an avid reader and they carry a lot of sentimentality for me. My book was an Algebra 2 book, and not being a math-oriented person it gave me a lot of stress learning all those concepts and equations. So I already knew I would gladly tear up the book, but I had no idea how I would incorporate the book itself into it. Then I opened the front cover and happened to read a little disclaimer in the front that detailed everything a student was NOT to do with the book, and the idea clicked. The specific words that triggered this was the phrase “…a student must not mark this textbook in any way…”which I ran with. It was definitely a defiant thought in nature, this idea that “you cannot tell me what to do with this textbook anymore,”and I know a lot of students end up feeling suffocated behind the wall-like layouts of textbooks. I wanted to physically liberate this imaginary student, and actually mark it up, so my initial idea was to have a bunch of kids on each page doing a tearing action like painting, skiing, etc. On the front page I actually wrote “A Mark” in crayon, a play on “c’est unepipe” and the childish nature of a crayon, which was definitely something 12 year old me would have appreciated. But due to time constraints and the fact that I did not want to use too many materials I ditched this idea of carving and creating figures for a more simplified approach with a torn-out, propiolike book. Some of the pages have had black construction paper glued onto them to mimic the concept of dry erase boards, except each of them portrays a different hobby or visually interesting concept made of cutouts from the torn book pages and outside photos. Doing this I learned a lot more about the technicalities within art perception and the weight that certain objects subconsciously have in our minds. I think I mostly succeeded in projecting this idea of freedom. As well as gained a new level of proficiency with an x-acto knife. I feel like this would be a great piece to show off my sense of sculptural art and it’s something I can really go into depth with as I’ve always liked collaging and I love putting together things pieces so I had genuine fun with it.