Artists Books Made From Real Books

Cur­rently speak­ing, the obses­sion of this Assem­blag­ist is to fold books. Paper­backs, 1950s Reader’s Digests, NC geog­ra­phy text­books from 1930s but of course you already know that if you read my blog. The dif­fi­cult part of the process lies in con­struct­ing the cov­ers for the books. I make the cov­ers from all man­ner of items. The Cen­ter for Book Arts is a good open­ing move for you if you want to see how books are made.

The ques­tion is: How much do I share and how much do I save as my artis­tic vision? I can write a tuto­r­ial on the MacE­wan Book Fold­ing Imper­a­tive but any­one can google “make books” or some non­sense and fig­ure out my method. For a basic Artist Book: I fold a page in half — over and over — three times. Then I open the final fold back into the orig­i­nal sec­ond fold and cut the fold like half-​way to the cen­ter. Then I re-​fold to the third half-​fold and voila, 8 pages.

I Wish For Salve

The Fluxus Part of Me says to con­tribute — to give. See, my inter­pre­ta­tion of Fluxus Ide­al­ism con­tains this dic­tum: Art is For All. No price reflects the impor­tance of the piece in ques­tion, the piece in ques­tion is worth what­ever value each indi­vid­ual viewer places on the expe­ri­ence. Art is Expe­ri­en­tial. It is a Give and Take and Give Experience.

Fluxus:

The Artist Gives the Object to the Viewer who in turn Takes the Expe­ri­ence into Account, Wit­nesses and Pon­ders, Then Returns the Object Back to the Artist and the Piece becomes new, refur­bished, re-​made in its expe­ri­en­tial self because it is changed every time some­one else expe­ri­ences it.

Each Wit­ness Cre­ates a New Definition.

This is New Art… same as the old art.

e for­mu­la­tion for book fold­ing method Step 2.B

There is no past, no future, only the present. The Now. The Fluxus Expe­ri­ence is Ongo­ing but it is Stag­nant. It is this con­stant the­o­ret­i­cal upheaval push­ing Fluxus Foward while it remains in the same place.

Never for­get this minor fact when read­ing this blog: The Author is South­ern U.S. and lives in a swamp on a pocosin*. Water moc­casins, gators, no-​see-​ums, and black insect water… every­thing is mildewed, every­thing cov­ered with mold spores. Such real­i­ties do tend to shade my obser­va­tions of life and art and all things in fluxs​.us. The South is Fluxs​.us and it’s in us, those of us who choose to dwell here.

*

Pocosin:

n. Chiefly South Atlantic U.S.

A swamp in an upland coastal region. Also called region­ally dis­mal.

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