Laume's Studio

Yesterday I stopped by the local library to order an interlibrary loan book and discovered that a whole bunch of books had been taken out of circulation and put on sale. Fiction - fifty cents for softcover, a dollar for hardcover. Cookbooks, art, and history books, apparently less important, were priced three for a dollar. That strikes me as sad, but still, my gain. I bought a whole box of books yesterday and blogged about it over on Beach Treasure. If you want to see the whole shebang, go on over and check it out. But the art books, I saved to post here.

I bought a half dozen old art books. Let me restate that - old art books. I emphasize that so you won't gasp in horror when I say that I plan on using them mainly as altered books or to mine the images and photos for use in altered books and collage work. (of course, if you're worried about books getting cut up, you can sigh in relief that I bought them because they're
probably safer with me, currently in the midst of a creative block, then they'd be with anyone else)

One of these has a broken binding, but the other one is still sturdy. I bought them for the beautiful gold embossing that covers the bindings and both the front and back covers. You can see it really well if you click to enlarge the photo. There are some neat art images inside as well.


There was a book filled with black and white photos of abandoned homesteads of Nevada. I looked through it, was about to put it back on the shelf, when I came across this photo. It's hard to see this small (again, click on it), but it's very haunting. Old peeling wallpaper covered, covered, and covered some more with religious images. I added the book to my toppling stack to bring home with me.

Another book I brought home was filled with Owl Art. Say that three times fast - owl art owl art owl art. I have a love/hate fascination with owls at the moment - I think they're fascinating, but I'm also afraid they want to eat my dog. Since I'm pretty sure I'm just paranoid about that last bit, I thought the images are pretty cool.

Another coffee table sized book was called Roman Art in Africa and was filled with all sorts of crumbling columns and half missing statues. How intriguing is this screaming dude?!

Hey, maybe I'll be inspired to actually dig out the rest of my supplies and and scissors and.....

mwahahahahaha! Books beware!