Valerie Savarie is a member of the Beautiful Bizarre Artist Directory
Living in the artistic shadow of her older sister Valerie Savarie turned to creative writing in her teens to allow her own artistic voice to be heard from beyond her sibling’s veil. Deep inside, the visual artist waited patiently for a time when the shadow would grow faint. When her sister’s and her evolution into two independent beings would allow her to express freely. When that time came, words and visual art had formed an inseparable bond, and so her book sculptures came to be.
In selecting books, it is important that they be published before 1972 (or, is at least as old as her). Sometimes the book instantly creates a visual concept and other times, Valerie seeks out a book that will echo her mental vision. Taking the written story within, she reinterprets it into a three-dimensional piece by cutting, sewing and painting (all done by hand without the use of power tools), thus creating a multidimensional collage while still leaving the majority of the book intact. Every page is kept bound into the book as it is important that her pieces retain their intrinsic book characteristics.
Each page that is visible is purposely selected to be seen – whether it be specific words, lack of words, images or a combination thereof. Words are as important as the visuals Valerie creates when making her book sculptures.
The characters she makes—the inhabitants of the books—are always painted in black and white, which allows them to live in balance within their predominantly black and white (text and page) surroundings. Sometimes they are animals; sometimes they are more human. Regardless of their species, the eyes typically lend themselves to a more humanistic expression and are the last thing Valerie paints. “Eyes tell a story within their own orb and greatly impact the feeling of a piece and so completing them last, I solidify the overall emotion I want to express”.
As her book sculptures evolve, Valerie Savarie finds her work growing beyond short stories, moving towards epic series – generating from a moment in time, page by page, book by book.
Valerie Savarie’s art starts out as a book so the subject matter can vary greatly. She tends to be drawn to books of poetry, fairy tales, fantasy and nature. Edgar Allan Poe is her favorite author to create from with Lewis Carroll coming in a close second.
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