Altered Books: Making Tangible Our Personal and Prophetic Narratives

Registration for this event closed on July 12th. Please contact registration@pendlehill.org with additional questions. 

Come and join a safe and brave online learning community while you explore a personal narrative that wants to be shared. Altered Bookmaking is an interactive art form where we recreate a book into our own work of art and story. Within us there is that of God and that of ourselves. Making an altered book can hold a truth that comes from our whole self.

As a member of our altered book community, you will learn altered bookmaking techniques, how to dig deep and reflect the integrity of your story, and how sharing your book with others can extend Spirit’s message through you into a wider landscape. We will journey together in this process, practicing skills in pilgrimage, discernment, letting go, crossing a threshold, transformation, and integration.

This program offers opportunities to draw, paint, collage, craft pop-ups and other architectural techniques, journal, and explore creativity in community. While techniques will be taught, participants will have the flexibility and autonomy to choose which experiences are right for them, their books, and their stories.

Please consult this supply list, including information on how to select a book to alter, prior to the start of the program. A more detailed course packet will be sent a couple weeks before the first session. This program is suitable for participants ages 15 and older with little or no experience in altered bookmaking, and for those who want to revisit techniques and try some new strategies in their craft or in the ways they share stories.

Download the flyer to share with your community

Leader

Jesse White is a narrative expressionist artist and writer. She has been teaching altered bookmaking as a transformative process for over 15 years. Jesse is the author of  God’s Invitation to Creative Play (PHP #468) and her essay, “Divine Creative Guidance and the Body,” was published in the October 2022 issue of  Friends Journal. A long-time teaching artist, she also has a work history in expressive arts therapy and paper and books conservation. Jesse served as the Arts & Spirituality Coordinator for Pendle Hill from 2013-2020 and as Clerk of the Board of the Fellowship of Quakers in the Arts from 2021-2023. She currently serves as the Director and Spiritual Arts Doula for  Pigeon Arts and as Eldering Clerk of Frankford Friends Meeting (PA).