Tribute to a Full Moon, 2024
Artist Isobelle Ouzman first started making altered books in 2012 after coming across a box of water-logged books sitting on a street in Seattle. Little did she know that those first early experiments with cutting and gluing pages together would lead to what is now her full-time focus. Ouzman has built a career transforming discarded, unwanted books into portals to magical worlds.
While these worlds inspired by folklore and fairytales are alluring escapes from reality, Ouzman notes that art is “like a mirror—it either reflects what we already feel, or the feelings we try hard to avoid. Art extends a hand to your heart, an embrace for your soul, and sometimes adds salt to the most tender cuts.” The imaginative artist considers herself a lifelong bookworm and is fascinated by the way stories shape our understanding of the world and ourselves.
Unsurprisingly, Ouzman has a deep interest in psychology and at one point aspired to be an art therapist. In a way, she is one, building connections between herself and viewers through shared consideration of the role of storytelling. “I only hope for people to see how transformative books and stories can be to our sense of self and belonging in the world,” Ouzman tells My Modern Met.
This message of using external stories to recalibrate our interior lives fits perfectly with her medium of books. They are small in scale compared to murals or installations; but, as any book-lover knows, they contain multitudes that often bear repeated examination.
In addition to considering the role of stories in our meaning-making, Ouzman also hopes to encourage a slower, more deliberate pace for both our lives and our consumption habits. “Not everything needs to be so fast-paced, so rapid, and easy to consume,” she says. “The world moves fast enough as it is, regardless.” Most of the books Ouzman works with now are donations. By turning them into art, she’s essentially saving them from going to a landfill. Through her meticulous cutting and detailed illustrating, she turns her art-making into a meditation on meaning and patience.
To stay up to date on the artist’s work, you can follow Ouzman on Instagram.
Through illustration and paper cutting, Isobelle Ouzman turns books destined for the landfill into magical works of art.
Cultivation, 2024
Ouzman gives renewed meaning to discarded books, and also examines how stories function in our own search for meaning.
Soul, 2024
Soul, 2024
Fade, 2024
The Interval, 2024.
Never certain where she will end when she first starts transforming the books, the sometimes fragile tomes become objects of meditation.
Constellation, 2023.
The Fox, 2023.
Messenger, 2023.
Home, 2022.
Squirrel at Home, 2019.
Isobelle Ouzman: Website | Instagram | Facebook
My Modern Met granted permission to feature photos by Isobelle Ouzman.
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