January, 2016: Fun House

   The first book of 2016 is titled Fun House. The book is a four-sided drop sides plexiglass box and the poem that lives inside it.  The piece was made using the criteria posted on the January 2, 2016 blog post. The wild card option was used to replace the TEXT card. So, rather than using another writer's work, this artist wrote the poem Fun House. All of the other Book Artist's Ideation card design criteria selected on January 2 were used in this book.

Fun House book in its plexiglass dropsides box

As a way of illustrating the unexpected challenges and oddities of life, all four sides of the plexiglass box fall down when the lid is lifted. Inside the box, the poem has been letterpress printed on stiff Stonehenge paper that was painted with pastel pastepaints. A subdued green bookcloth binds the pages and gray bookcloth binds the cased-in covers. The covers are plexiglass, like the box. The plexiglass has been painted and stamped with abstract imagery of grids, windows, spirals and other marks.

all 4 walls fallen down...

The box lid is embellished with a number of clay masks... signifying the unexpected rolls we sometimes take on in life. Just as, in a similar way... fun houses distort and contort reality.

weird masks adorn the lid

This is the poem, written to complete the criteria of humor in the piece...

What do you do...

when your ears are too big

and your legs are too short?

your hair is thinning

and your boobs need support?

first two pages

you walk like your Grandpa

and snore like a GOAT?

and all the buttons keep popping

off your pants and your coat?

Do you visit a doctor? 

a fat farm? a spa?

or sit on the couch

eating chocolate pasta?

next two pages

No! you pull up your pants

and head out the door.

Go visit the Fun House

with its weirdness galore.

Because the Fun House is a place

where age doesn't matter.

Everyone's strange and ridiculous...

but mostly the latter.

and so on...

You stumble through its tunnels

and walk its moving floors

gaze into warped mirrors

get lost behind doors.

You get a good workout,

and also a good laugh,

thank god for your blessings

and stop writing your epitaph.

last pages, The End

The last page shows the colophon and background information of the printing of the book.

the colophon

Wikipedia states that unlike thrill rides, funhouses are participatory attractions, where visitors enter and move around under their own power. Incorporating aspects of a playful obstacle course, funhouses seek to distort conventional perceptions and startle people with unstable and unpredictable physical circumstances within an atmosphere of wacky whimsicality. Sometimes life does that too!

inside a Fun House...

an abandoned Fun House, somewhere in the world

The Book Artist's Ideation Cards selected for February, 2016 are:

COLOR: favorite
IMAGE: traced, re-drawn, lifted from outside sources
LAYOUT: minimal or restrained
PAPER: multiple colors
STRUCTURE: multiple openings (french doors, dos-a-dos, split page, etc.)
TECHNIQUE: high-tech (letterpress, offset printing, printmaking, typewriter, etc.)
TEXT: collaborate with a writer or poet
ADJECTIVE: humorous
The wild card option may be used to disregard any ONE criteria.

Paperbuttons.blogspot.com would be delighted to exhibit photos of any artists books created using the February 2016 criteria. Please email the jpegs (and useful descriptive information) to ksteinsberger@yahoo.com

Enjoy!
Kathy