Here’s a project from my art classes that you might like to try in your own studio. It was inspired by Mark Todd’s Junk Zines and Souther Salazar’s Scrap Books.
At the beginning of the school year, I invited my students to contribute to my Collection of Beautiful Trash. I promised to use it for an end of the year surprise. Over the course of the year, they got really excited about the quality of their trash. As soon as the school year ended, I browsed through the detritus, selected the most compelling items, and bound the beautiful trash into these three volumes.
Although you can’t see it in these photographs, the titles “Mr. Hughes’s Book of Beautiful Trash” are embossed onto the covers. The books will be added to the art room library so that, next year, the students can peruse them for inspiration and, hopefully, learn a thing or two about the beauty of imperfection. A few of the spreads can be seen below.
