Through the lens of sustainability, students Izzy Hendry 芒鈧�14 and Andrea Mackey ’17 flipped through the torn pages of their worn-out books, and with a flash of creativity they converted them into imaginative works of art, saving them from the landfill.
As a result, Hendry and Mackey ranked among the top three winners of the third-annual , a repurposed paper art contest sponsored by The Claremont Colleges Library. Hendry, a foreign languages major from Atlanta, nabbed second place and a $100 prize for her piece “.” Her old book became a replica of a city filled with聽skyscrapers.
Hendry ripped out and used some of the book’s back pages to create a pop-up model city, and she also hand painted a map near the replica of miniature buildings. Between the pages of the open book, she inserted decorative images of such international landmarks as the Prague Castle, Egyptian pyramids and a Spanish castle.
Mackey, a neuroscience major from Sherman Oaks, Calif., took third-place honors for her entry titled, “.” She transformed the pages from her damaged physics book into rolling blue waves that appear poised to slam into a whirlpool. Mackey used acrylic paint, twine, and an old stagelight lens to create the illusion of a vortex.
“I took an old textbook, burnt it, cut it, and painted over it. I then asked my peers to write whatever they were stressed about on the sides of the textbook. Everything I used was going into the trash, with the exception of the acrylic paint and twine,” says Mackey, who took home $50 for her third-place finish.
Nicky Subler of Harvey Mudd College was awarded the top honor and $250 for her artwork, “Keep Looking.”
The purpose of the contest is to encourage individuals to creatively repurpose old paperbacks, printouts, magazines, textbooks, or notebooks into works of art, instead of heaping them into a recycling bin. And, as Ben Franklin once said, “Waste not, want not.”