Vintage Ephemera and Unbridled Creativity in Wanda Hela Katz’s Artist Books
If you are enthralled by mystery, texture, and books, you’ll love the work of Wanda Hela Katz. Her pieces are incredibly intricate collages formed into books where every page holds a new visual surprise.
It’s almost overwhelming how much information is on each page -vintage papers, worn textile bits, and antique ephemera of all kinds comingle with eco-dying and mini metal items. I find my brain immediately trying to decipher what each material is and how it’s been treated. It’s junk journaling at its extreme best.
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Katz’s feel for composition and material usage is so natural and playful. At first glance you see pages filled with ‘stuff’, and as you keep looking you can follow the story as each spread plays off the one before.
Not a section of the book is uninteresting – the spines and little closing mechanisms are some of my favorite parts of her books! Some books are homages to creative people, while others are simply creations interesting of their own accord.
From one of her IG posts:
“…I am deeply grateful to these objects that we call books with covers and pages and yet that doesn’t really do justice to what they can signify.
Never ever could I have imagined I would become a maker of books myself. There is a part of me that is deeply grateful for all my experiences as they have brought me into creativity.
The joy is real and I feel blessed.
Working mostly with antique papers and ephemera my fascination with page edges, patina and folds keeps me spellbound. These precious holders of secrets and of unknown lives spent.
A deep sense of history and of time passing are embedded and etched within these folios.”
Wanda Hela Katz: Instagram
Also get a load of these other beautiful artist books.
