Tautou

I've been collecting old textbooks from the late 1800s and early 1900s for about 4 years now. I find them for a couple dollars or less at book fairs and then use the words, illustrations, and covers of the books to create collages, several of which you can view here on my website. I am so happy with my latest collage. This collage in particular is something I've been wanting to make for a very long time. A few months ago I came across the phrase "in the sea" in one of the stories in a book of mine, and since then I knew I had to make a collage containing the lyrics of Tautou, one of my favorite songs by Brand New. This song has inspired quite a lot in my work, including a photo and a stop motion film. I cut out the words from various books and they sat in a corner on my desk untouched for a few months. Every now and then I would check to make sure all the words were still there, and I would rifle through old photos, looking for the right one to superimpose the lyrics on, but nothing fit. I forgot about the project for awhile, but then the other day I found the perfect book with the prettiest blue cover. I loved the way it faded towards the bottom and I knew it would be just what I needed for this collage - specifically for the first half of the song. At home I found a book with a deep red cover that would do great for the latter half of the lyrics. I wanted it to fade like the other cover did, so I applied a bleach solution to the tip of the book to create a gradient. I'm really happy with how this came out, especially since I haven't created anything like this since last November. I made another collage the next morning out of the other half of the blue book's cover (cut it into 3 parts, flipped the middle one over, and bleached the last third) and found some neat diagrams from my biology textbook Our Bodies and How We Live (c. 1884) to add. I'm hoping to be making more of these soon.