Altered Bookmaking Class with Cristina Link & Anne Heffron

6 consecutive Saturdays, starting May 4, from 11-12:30 ET on Zoom

$150

My altered book is my story; it holds the words I could not say when screaming for connection. Art is my tool for understanding life, piecing together my adoption, and reclaiming ME.

Cristina Link

Putting together my story and my place in the world while writing You Don’t Look Adopted and To Be Real helped calm down the part of my brain that was always seeking to organize fragments of thoughts and memories so I could better focus on what was happening in the here and now.

Anne Heffron

Altered bookmaking involves modifying a book by tearing, painting, collaging, cutting, and deconstructing it to rebuild it during reconstruction as you narrate your narrative in the new pages of your book. The pages you deconstruct will give you a safe container for emotions that have felt uncontained in the past. Your altered book becomes your story through nonverbal expression in art; in this class, your writing is combined with your art.

Have you ever felt like your thoughts weren’t heard?

Have you ever felt like you were screaming for something or someone to connect with you, but you didn’t know how?

Come and explore some creative strategies for connecting to your inner self and your story through expressive altered bookmaking. This will capture your complex thoughts, dreams, and desires in one place.

Cristina’s method of art journaling is transformed in the process of altered bookmaking. It involves free-formed watercolor paintings and soulful artistic prompts that identify a person's personality, communication, processing style, fears, and other traits that interfere with success in many areas of life. In your altered book, we will focus on nonverbal expression during the deconstruction and reconstruction of our books to unlock the creativity hidden underneath us.

This workshop does not require any artistic ability whatsoever. All you need is the desire to explore your colorful self, finally, and to have an outlet for your feelings on YOUR adoption in a place created to help you feel safe and freely able to express yourself.

We will walk participants through various creative prompts aligned with writing prompts guided by Anne. We will use color and creativity to interpret what blocks us and to find what we really want to say.

Suggested Supplies List:

CHOOSE YOUR BOOK (Cristina’s altered book consisted of a thick, heavy textbook titled “Attachment Disorders in Adults.” The subject of attachment disorders had a massive significance on the weight her adoption held on her soul.)

PHOTOS (if you have any pictures of you that you want to include, baby photos, adoptive parents, photocopies of your adoption papers, or ANYTHING that is a part of your story…start gathering a folder of things that matter to YOU)

WHITE GESSO

WATERCOLOR PAINT SET (have a variety of colors. 24 pack helps, or tiny tubes)

PAINT BRUSHES of various sizes

MAGAZINES of your choice or collage ephemera (if specific images are needed for art prompts, we will instruct you to bring them to the next meeting).

ALPHABET STENCILS or LETTER STAMPS

GLUE STICKS

BLACK SHARPIE

PENCILS and COLORED PENCILS

MARKERS of your choice

DISTRESS INK (Cristina loves these.)

Amazon Links:

Watercolor sets: https://a.co/d/7w3v1yB - https://a.co/d/330FfPB