We have to present an image from our research trips to talk briefly about this week.
I bought this very old, damp and battered book of Shakespearian poems at the Portico Library.
Opening upon a random page, I chose a word (with a pin) that happened to be ‘PERIL’
I decided to create an artwork from the book, using Peril as my starting point.
The beginning of the book now blanks out most of the words except a few relaying a sentence about Shakespeare’s dark works.
Then I have cut rectangles through page after page, gradually decreasing in size until you can view the one word ‘Peril’.
I also google imaged the words I have left on view and then quickly sketched the first image that came up onto the peril page to show how modern technologies and research methods can illustrate old works and words.
Is it desecration to write,draw in and cut up old books?
Maybe – but all the same it can make people look at these unloved, unused and neglected books in a whole new way – surely that’s a good thing?
