I Made a Book
I published a book.
For a majority of my life I have filled books with my drawings. This is a sort of compulsive way to journal and process my thinking while simultaneously developing my ideas and visual vocabulary. Over the past year I have been drawing and painting on top of my older artwork and on top of print outs of my digitally altered photos and drawings.
Alia Ollikainen : 2021 - Time is a Circle - 23 Mixed Media Artworks on Paper.
The book is pictured here sitting on top of the collage project which uses the cut up original paintings contained in the pages of the book. Book format is A5 (5.83 x 8.27 in / 148 x 210 mm) with full color pages. Available for purchase from Lulu.com.
My goal with these sheets of copy paper was to cut them all apart and turn them into materials to use for a collage. While painting on these pages I contemplated the primary symbol of a circle, and the various fundamental meanings circles hold. I revel in this process of circular creation, the meanings of time, death, and recreation and making my artwork based on loose sets of ever changing rules which I set for myself. I scanned all of these pages to archive the process.
As I collected this stack of loose drawn on pages to scan I realized I was now holding the content of an unintentional book. I had previously been considering re-creating a book of my art that I had lost yet still had scans of. Now I had scans of a book that did not yet exist. In this process, I made a circle. The book itself has become the artwork, which you can purchase from Lulu.com.
Published in 2021: Twenty-three mixed media artworks on paper by Alia Ollikainen contemplating the concept of circles and time, bound into one book.
The original paper pages have since been cut up and processed into parts of a still developing collage. The photos of this book are taken on top of one panel of this collage. The contents of this book now exist in the form of the book and are singularly available as greeting cards. By purchasing this book or the cards you are participating in this circular artwork and supporting my efforts to continue my art practice.
