Taking inspiration from visual artists who make books

In researching how others have made boxes or used them to hold their artist books, I came across these two artists.

This one caught my eye. It wasn't the box so much that inspired me, rather what she did with it. Visual artist Lesley Patterson-Marx's Radiant Paint Box opens up to reveal miniature books, each one unique which contains words and images.

Radiant Paint Box 2012

mixed media,  9"x3"

Lesley Patterson-Marx

The box is a familiar object as are the paints within it. The artist has taken something that is familiar to us and put an additional twist to it.

Through the process of making prints, drawings, artist’s books and mixed-media work, I express wonder at the connections between human life and the natural world, order within chaos, and the sublime mysteries that lie within the mundane. The subject matter in my work arrives from the process of collecting. In poring over old magazines, sifting through jars of buttons, arranging stacks of sepia and black-and-white photographs, and collecting bug-eaten leaves, four-leaf clovers and cicada wings that I find on daily walks, I arrive at the images and textures that move me to make something more of them than they could be on their own. Arranging them within my work reminds me that I am a part of something familiar and cyclical that would otherwise seem vast and unknowable. Lesley Patteron-Marx

Embroidered box-type form of book Janet Edmonds



This exquisite design by Janet Edmonds features in her book Beginner's Guide to Embroidered Boxes, published by Search Pr Ltd, UK, 2002. 

 

A box to contain a book, Janet Edmonds

And I came across this one too by Aileen Clarke which was on Etsy. It has inspired me to have a go at making a fabric box for my But book to go in. It may take a while, but I will try and see what I can do and what materials will best suit it.

Embroidered box by Aileen Clarke