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Reading Between the Lines : An Altered Book

30/10/2020

 
Inheritance of Secrets
Dedication Page
My Library Receipt
It hadn't occurred to me that I would need to come up with a title for the artwork I submitted to the Biblio Art Prize being held by Blarney Books & Art in Port Fairy, Victoria, Australia, until I was filling out the online submission form.
Ordinarily as I'm working on any piece it will have a 'working' title & the 'public' title usually becomes evident somewhere along the creative journey.
I really did not think about this until I saw TITLE on the submission form & thought oops didn't see that coming. 

My book is Inheritance of Secrets by Sonya Bates.
It is a superb book, well researched & well written. It's a compelling read & very hard to put down. 

It is time to confess - I am an unapologetic book alterer and the book is my artwork !

​When I received my book title I was really thrilled to have been given a murder mystery set in parts of Adelaide I was familiar with and which also has a post WWII immigration story underpinning it. 

I discovered our local library had the book so I took it out to read it while I waited for the one I’d ordered online to arrive. 

At one stage I had 2 copies of the book, the library’s & my own, which made me think about how much fun it would be to discover an altered library book. 
Not dramatically altered so that it’s immediately obvious that it’s been tampered with but strategically embellished - so that’s what I did. 

The staff at the library gave me the stickers for the spine & offered to stamp the edges with their NEW PLYMOUTH LIBRARY stamp but I thought that might be going too far ! 

I chose my 12 favourite scenes & have interpreted them on the relevant pages.
Interestingly, as I read the book, all the historic scenes came to me in black & white - like an old war movie, so that’s what I’ve done in the book. 
My favourite parts are the Lancaster bomber silhouettes pg 20, the niche, which hides a key & a pawn ticket, cut into pg 116 and the letter to Grete written in German, as it would have been, on pg 403. 

Must admit this whole book torturing thing is so.much.fun ;)

Sal xx

ps I played around with that saying about 'not judging a book by the cover' for the title but that just sounded derogatory to this wonderful book.

pps I really think it would make a great movie . . . just putting that out to the universe.

ppss the other fabulous thing that has happened as a result of entering this competition is that I've discovered a selection of books written in the last 12 months by Australian & New Zealand authors AND most of the ones I'm drawn to are in our local library. which is fabulous. 2020 has been a good read @)(@

Lancaster Bomber Silhouettes pg 20
Memory of Oma & Opa's Lounge Room pg 65
Memories of Opa pg 177
Wondering about the contents of Han's satchel pg 237 (an old map folded into the pages)
Letter to Grete written in German pg 403
An acknowledgement of Immigrant families & their connection to a new home
Memory of Lily pg 56
Note : Evidence pg31
Text msgs between Lily & Juliet
a package of letters, an old key & an old pawn ticket hidden in a box pg 116
MS Fairsea 1950
'If it comes to it I'll go Mahogany' pg 287

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    About
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    Hi, I'm Sally
    I'm a fibre artist who loves botanicals - especially NZ native plants
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