Media: Altered Books
Population: Adolescents
Condition: Grief and bereavement
When beginning the exercise, I did not know what I should reflect on. The book itself and my relationship with it were what dictated the way I approached alteration. I selected a book which belonged to a passed loved one when she was young. The cover was already in bad condition and there were notes taken throughout the text. The book is in French, so I felt less attached to the specific words and themes which were used throughout the book. My materials were primarily collage images and words, glue stick, and clear shiny tape. There are many pages left to work with, so more media may come into play later.
Chilton (2007) discussed the characteristics, symbolism, and clinical applications of altered books with adolescents. Her article focuses on the shifting identities and meanings around adolescent development specifically with teens in foster care (Chilton, 2007). I suggest that this kind of traumatic experience is similar to mourning, in that the people who were part of the young person’s life are no longer accessible or able to care for them. The opportunity to freely destroy an object which is designed to emit a message becomes the subject into which a new message is imbued. Further, because of the many-paged nature of books, they can serve as a natural place for serial works and their portable size may be more easily revisited and reflected upon more often than other media (Chilton, 2007). Altered book art appealed to me as a means of connecting to an artifact which belonged to the deceased. Because of when the book was used, I felt that I was learning about my loved one from a time before I entered her life, allowing me to share in an experience which may have shaped who she became. I could transform an object which was used by her to explore and process her lost presence as well as the change in identity that I and the rest of her surviving loved ones might experience.
Fortunately, this process can be utilized with myriad populations depending on the books and alteration materials offered. However, certain places, cultures, and socioeconomic experiences may hold differing views on the alteration of books (Chilton, 2007). It affected me to read in Chilton’s (2007) article of the difficulty that people of impoverished backgrounds may experience when faced with the idea of altering, or perhaps destroying from that perspective, a precious object. I experienced this difficulty while trying to find a book in my home which felt appropriate for this task.
References
Chilton, G. (2007). Altered books in art therapy with adolescents. Art Therapy, 24(2). pp. 59-63. DOI: 10.1080/07421656.2007.10129588
