Altered Book

Materials: Acrylic paint, Collage, Magazine cutouts, Markers, Colors,

This altered book project is based on All About Love by bell hooks, and over the course of the semester it slowly became a personal journey for me. When I first started, I didn’t have a strict plan. I simply opened the book and responded page by page to what I felt. As I worked through all 100 pages, the main themes that kept showing up were love, identity, healing, and transformation. I see this book as a visual conversation with bell hooks’ words, mixed with my own emotions, memories, and growth. Each page tells a small story, and together they form a larger story about how love shapes us and changes us over time.

In the beginning, my process was very paint-heavy and color-driven. I used strong reds, pinks, and dark tones to express passion, pain, and vulnerability. At that stage, I was more focused on how the pages felt emotionally than how they looked technically. I layered paint, collage, and text freely, letting my emotions guide me. After completing around 50 pages, something shifted naturally. I started drawing more and relying less on paint. Without really planning it, I leaned into line work, figures, symbols, and simple illustrations. I realized drawing felt more natural to me, and instead of fighting that, I decided to go with the flow. The second half of the book reflects this change, showing my growth and comfort with drawing as a main way of storytelling.

My materials include paint, markers, colored pencils, magazine cutouts, and the original text from the book itself. I love mixing printed words with my own drawings because it creates a conversation between bell hooks’ ideas and my personal response to them. Sometimes I cover the text completely, and other times I let it show through, almost like the words are whispering beneath the surface. One challenge I faced was keeping the pages clean, especially when markers bled through. At first, this felt like a mistake, but I learned to see these moments as happy accidents. In some cases, the bleed-through created unexpected designs on the next page, and instead of fixing it, I embraced it. Those moments taught me that mistakes can actually lead to stronger and more honest work.

This project really pushed me out of my comfort zone. Painting was not something I felt confident with at first, but once I allowed myself to experiment, I discovered new ways to express emotion. I became less afraid of “ruining” a page and more open to taking risks and trusting the process. Seeing my classmates’ work also inspired me a lot. I was especially drawn to how my classmate Ayhonor used small magazine eyes to create a mysterious feeling in her pages, and how Brook transformed fabric into a sculptural, cake-like form that felt playful and almost three-dimensional. Watching everyone approach the project in such different ways reminded me that art does not have to be perfect it just needs to feel honest, personal, and real.

Overall, this altered book feels alive to me. I use balance, contrast, rhythm, texture, and unity throughout the pages to keep the book visually connected, even as my style changes. The first 50 pages and the last 50 pages don’t look the same, and I actually love that. It shows growth, confidence, and honesty. This book didn’t turn out the way I originally imagined and that’s exactly why it matters to me. It reflects how love, like art, is messy, layered, evolving, and always teaching us something new.