Completed Book Project

Today we turned in our book projects. Here are some low-quality cell phone pictures of mine:

side view

top view

What I did to create this piece: I shred up to 25-30 pages at a time into strips, then I french braided the strips together - about 4 or 5 braids per section. I ended up having to take out chunks of pages in order to make the binding not fall apart. The braiding element of it is somewhat lost, but I really like the form that it ended up taking in the end. I took the cover of the book off (it was an American Government textbook from my freshman year, it cost me about $1.50 off Amazon. Score.). Altogether, I spent about 6 hours shredding and braiding this monster. It's definitely not a book anymore. I had a friend make a comment that it was "about as useful as it was before," which made me chuckle. Some of the braids started to come undone, but I think it still has unity with the random stray strips poking out.

Other students made a variety of interesting work. A lot of people chose to manipulate "Alice in Wonderland" books, some of which turned out really well. I tended to prefer the more sculptural pieces versus books that other students created, but even then some really great work was made. So many minds created such a wide variety within the same goal. Walking around and seeing everyone else's work is always my favorite part of critique day!