A BOOK ABOUT A BOOK

Pop Quiz
By Dave Dyment
About the project: A near comprehensive collection of all of the questions posed in pop songs from the artist’s music collection.
360-page softcover artist’s book
5″ x 8″
Edition of 500, numbered and signed by the artist (each with unique handwritten question)
$50

Experimental 2/3

ARTIST BOOK PROJECT: A BOOK ABOUT A BOOK

Note on Schedule:
1. Book design workshop with Nathan

2. WORK IN PROGRESS due for discussion

3. ***Final works uploaded and submitted for printing deadline****

4. Works will also be discussed in progress during class.

Consider a book. Use any book you are interested in – a novel, a textbook, a book of essays, a field guide, a book of maps, a self-help book, an instruction manual, a cookbook, a memoir, a monograph… the possibilities are endless.

Choose one book as the point of departure for a print-on-demand artist book that you will develop and design in class. Like examples of artist publications discussed in class, your artist book will emphasize image over text and be an artwork in its own right.  It can be any length or size available on Blurb.com under a budget of (total) $30 including taxes.

Your work can be about the book, use the book’s images, respond to or engage the book in any way. Consider content, text, meaning, and image in your work. The original book may or may not be visible or obvious in your finished work – but the artist book will represent your own version of the ideas in the book, and your own responses. The work may be discursive and legible, or it may be austere, formalized or abstract.

Strategies and motifs you may consider:

Scanning and photocopying from books

Using found photographs from the internet

Taking photographs

Working with appropriated text

Using text as image

Making a book from the past into the present

Focusing/repeating one detail in a book

Exploring visual references in the book

Responding to cover art, diagrams or illustrations in a book

Playing with scale

Rearrangements and reorientations

Drawing from books


More student examples:

See also: Dave Dyment and Nothing Else Press

*Bring three possible books to work with and discuss on Thursday